It doesn’t take much to bring you back, a scent or a sound, a word or a phrase, perhaps a sparrow sitting innocently on a branch, fading into a logging factory as smoke rises towards a cloudless sky and that familiar tune begins to play, all yearning and poignant. Suddenly you’re back in Twin Peaks and it’s like you never even left.

God, does that tune have to be so damn maudlin though? It makes you wanna cry and they’re still only rolling the credits. Watch the names flip in and out: Kyle McLaughlin… Sherilynn Fenn… Jack Nance... argh it’s such a beautiful song. Reminds you that for all the madness and mystery of this legendary series, it’s also very unmistakably a show about a murdered girl, daughter, friend, community member. David Lynch and Mark Frost certainly don’t skimp on the tragedy. And that pilot is one of the finest things ever committed to syndicated network television.

She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic…

Even though the body on the beach is identified pretty much immediately, there are then several minutes of panic from the Palmer parents before Sherriff Truman finally breaks the news to them. And from there we skip to the school where the classmates of the murdered Laura Palmer are alerted to the tragedy. Laura’s friends Donna and James seem to figure it out before the official word comes across the loudspeaker from the principal. It’s almost 35 minutes before we even meet the coffee-lovin’, tape-recordin’, dapper-lookin’, theory-testin’ Special Agent Dale Cooper… by which time we’ve already had our first impressions of many of the town’s most interesting residents.

It really is just a perfect hour and a half of telly. The pilot episode of Twin Peaks has zero flaws, and watching it back after time you lose nothing of the emotional and narrative impact of it. Maybe some of the narrative impact, actually, the whole murder mystery plot was never what the show was really truly about… until they solved it and ran out of other stuff to do… but that wasn’t Lynch or Frost’s fault.

Hey, it’s funny as hell too. Sometimes you miss the humour because the whole thing is such a wave but those dark jokes and silly one-liners are all the way through this thing. The biggest laugh out loud moment of the pilot? The introduction of Log Lady, without doubt. Although the Douglas Firs are way up there too, as is the instant buddy cop banter between Sheriff Truman and Agent Cooper. Sheriff Harry S. Truman… the fact they named him so specifically after a president is a pretty solid indicator of what a mental maze you’re heading down from the very beginning.

Poor young James, the rogue teenage biker with the heart of gold. Always brooding like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Getting picked on by Bobby, the football captain who doesn’t really look like he could throw or tackle and skips out on training because he feels like it. Eh, Twin Peaks is a pretty, erm… white… township, doubt their footy team is worth much. (By 2017 they’ll probably be more of a soccer town anyway). He’s all arms and legs, that Bobby. That and his magnificent 90s hair. He’s a straight up arsehole in the early episodes but from memory he really lightens up as he and Shelley get serious. Mike’s still a dick, though.

Or poor young Donna, best friend to the victim and developing love interest of her secret love interest. With her kind-hearted folks and the sister who’ll cover for her when she needs to sneak out (but who barely ever shows up again – not to mention the other sister who’s absent ‘til way later). Donna and James bring the melodrama to this showpiece. As for Audrey Horne, she brings the steam. Sultry insolent Audrey, a quick puff on that cigarette and back to whatever she can do to piss off daddy. She’s so captivating she gets her own musical score.

It’s like I’m having the most beautiful dream, and the most terrible nightmare, all at once.

It’s not until the second episode where the horror beneath the surface begins to show through. That old Lynchian trope. Killer Bob in the vision and Mrs Palmer’s screams. Or the absolute creepshow that is Dr Jacoby. Yikes, the tropical theme doesn’t do him much of a service either.

Minor Character Renewed First Impression Rankings:

Log Lady (and her log, naturally)
Hawk, the Native American Cop
Pretty waitress Norma
Pete “There’s a fish in the percolator!” Martell
Uncle Ed at the gas station
Lucy the Squeaky-Talkative Secretary
Donna’s little sister
The Norwegians
Killer Bob (despite it all)
James’ mate with the bike who had the curly ponytail and ferried Donna to see him who kinda looks like the guitarist from The Commitments

I’m realising I’ve probably trended towards the younger characters here, which is no coincidence. It’s Donna and James’ personal quest, Audrey’s personal quest, that give the show it’s impetus. They’re the ones who were most connected to the murder at the centre of the tale, the magguffin that it is, and therefore they’re the ones with the most at stake emotionally. Their lives still have infinite purpose by virtue of their youth while the older generations are trapped within this psychically demented town. The evil that the Sherriff talks about in relation to the Bookhouse Boys, it’s embedded within them once their roots are set in its soil. The kids though, they can still get out of there. Like a Springsteen song or something.

There's a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods.

And providing the personified generation gap is Shelley Johnson, married to that scumbucket Leo but having a thing on the side with Bobby. By age she oughta be one of the youngbloods but by settling down with her abusive trucker husband she’s just as trapped as her boss Norma, with the convicted felon for a husband who she’s too scared to ask for a divorce meanwhile boyfriend Ed is equally tied to his one-eyed wife (not named Jack), in a less criminal but more mentally unstable sorta way. Those roots they set in deep if you let them.

Which is where the new series, which starts on May 21 in America, gets really fascinating. There has been a very discreet kind of promotional rollout there. David Lynch pulled out of the project briefly, then returned and added a bunch more episodes. He seems to have pretty complete control there. There have been no trailers but several teasers. Brief clips and rare stills but nothing that even hints at the plot direction that this thing is gonna take. The head of Showtime called it ‘Lynch on Heroin’… whatever that means. All I know is that if Lynch is in the director’s seat then I trust it.

But those kids that were so urgent in the original two seasons, they’re now 25 years older themselves. They’re not the kids anymore, they’re their parents. Those teenagers that seemed to carry the torch for hope and fulfilment are all returning to the show to pick up where they left off, this captivatingly preternatural township tattooed upon their lives, and unless David Lynch and Mark Frost have gone all Stephen King on us then you can go on ahead and assume it won’t be under the guise of some tacky high school reunion. Or maybe it will be, who the hell knows? This is Twin Peaks we’re talking about after all.

(Also, Stephen King is great. No hate on Stephen King).

You know this is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee

Obviously this is the first in a series of Twin Peaks retrospective pieces, so feel free to keep on checking in on the site for more. While you're at it, maybe give a whack on an ad and help us keep writing things.