Year: 2017

In the US: Sundays, 9pm ET/PT, Showtime
In the UK: Mondays, 2am, Sky Atlantic

Like most of David Lynch’s work, it’s easy to recognise Twin Peaks‘ importance without really being able to explain why it’s important. Ostensibly a pastiche of US soap operas mashed up with a murder-mystery, it was still obvious from the get-go that Lynch was doing something TV really hadn’t done before. But it was really hard to say what it was doing.

I remember sitting in the TV room during my first week of university watching the show that all the papers had told us was must-see TV. I was already a Lynch fan, Channel 4 having introduced me to most of his movies over the years, so I was looking forward to it even more than most.

But for half an hour we sat there, wondering what the hell everyone was raving about, as the body of high school cheerleader Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) was washed up ‘wrapped in plastic’ near the small town of Twin Peaks and the inhabitants underwent all the stages of grief you’d expect from seeing a golden girl struck down in the prime of life in a town that felt like it hadn’t quite escaped the 1950s.

Then enter Special Agent Dale Cooper (Dune and Blue Velvet‘s Kyle MacLachlan), a boy scout of an FBI agent sent to investigate the murder, and suddenly the tension of the room eased. At last, we understood what everyone was on about. This was magic. This was art.

Over the course of the next two seasons, the show proved elusive. Sometimes a murder-mystery, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a horror movie, Twin Peaks was indefinable oddness, with perfectly ordinary characters (James the biker boy) interspersed with oddball small town characters (Deputy Andy), oddball FBI agents (David Duchovny’s cross-dressing agent and Lynch’s own deaf agent), oddball characters from nowhere in the world (The Log Lady – so-called, because she carried a log with her) and oddball characters from nightmares (Bob, the ultimate killer of Laura Palmer, who came from ‘the Black Lodge’ and possessed people).

There have been books filled with theories about Twin Peaks and what it was. What’s often forgotten is that it wasn’t very David Lynch. Sure, the undertones from Blue Velvet, with its theme of “the darkness hiding behind the facade of white picket fences”, was obvious. But while Cooper got inspiration from dreams and the Black Lodge had dead people talking backwards and dwarves dancing…

…the nightmare surrealism of Eraserhead was a distant memory.

In fact, objectively speaking, Twin Peaks was mostly a very conventional ABC soap opera cum thriller that just happened to have some wonderful characters and some wonderful moments of surrealism.

Nevertheless, despite being cancelled after two seasons and its follow-up movie flopping, Twin Peaks has remained a worldwide cult classic, esteemed almost as much as its contemporary The X-Files was, but without having been dragged past the point of a natural death and ending on a worthy cliffhanger – Cooper seemingly possessed by Bob after a final encounter in the Black Lodge.

Somewhat perfectly, though, the show had a built-in promise that it would return in 25 years and Showtime in the US has delivered on that promise with a whole new limited series. The question was: what form would it take? Would it be a simple cash-in that brought back a few characters for a quick new murder to be solved? Would it simply riff all the original’s greatest hits without adding anything? Sure, David Lynch was on board, but when was the last time he’d done something exceptional? Mullholland Drive or Lost Highway maybe?

Well, the first two episodes are in and I have to say the new Twin Peaks is magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. And what’s more, it’s a return not just to Twin Peaks but to the David Lynch of pretty much all his movies, including Eraserhead. Although maybe not Dune (Hal yawm!).

Continue reading “Review: Twin Peaks 3×1-3×2 (US: Showtime; UK: Sky Atlantic)”

In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC

Downward Dog feels like an also-ran. When I was commenting last week how I was sure there were more new TV shows due our way soon, I was recalling from my write-up of last year’s Upfronts that the show existed and was a mid-season replacement, and as mid-season was running out, surely Downward Dog had to be on on our screens soon (whither Still Star-Crossed?).

More so, I wrote it up as “A dog comments on a woman’s life”, in part because of Imaginary Mary, which I wrote up as “An imaginary friend comments on a woman’s life”. It was clearly not just a second tier show, but a second tier show following in the wake of a near identical second tier show on the exact same network, but without even the benefit of Imaginary Mary‘s Jenna Elfman, making it probably a fifth tier show at best.

Or so I thought.

Based on a web series of the same name, Downward Dog sees Fargo‘s Allison Tolman playing some sort of creative in advertising. She puts together presentations for ad campaigns anyway. Whatever it is she does, it doesn’t make her happy, in part because her boss Barry Rothbart (The Wolf of Wall Street) thinks he’s a feminist but is really a mansplainer who’ll go for any ad campaign containing French words and nudity.

Her personal life? Even less happy, since she’s broken up from her boyfriend Lucas Neff (Raising Hope) and spends most of her nights in, crying to herself and drinking red wine.

Which cheers up her dog no end. That’s quality time, he says. Because the conceit of Downward Dog is that her dog talks to camera, except rather than simply saying “Bunnies… food… meat… hugs… sleep” in continuous cycles, he talks to the camera like an emotionally hyperaware man talking to his therapist. He’s still a dog, so doesn’t understand that when Tolman drives off every morning, she’s driving to work, not just having fun by herself. He doesn’t think they’re in a relationship either (thankfully), although they clearly have a relationship, and so ‘Ned’ spends most of his time dryly discussing what Tolman is doing wrong and how it affects him, his loneliness when she’s out and so on. Oh yes, and the fact the neighbourhood cat (Lady Dynamite‘s Maria Bamford) is clearly a sociopath who wishes to destroy him emotionally.

So the show is of two halves. The workplace half is pretty ordinary stuff, with the standard Working Girl approach to work, with Tolman discovering her inner strength with the help of both Ned and gal pal Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Love), after being kept down by her boss. The far more interesting half is Ned and his commentary – perhaps unsurprisingly, as that’s the core of the web series. At times, that’s genuinely funny, although it’s not until the dream sequence at the end that there was a real, life-out-loud moment.

It’s gentle, but human stuff that dog owners will probably find funnier than the pet-less will. It’s smart, although not so much that you’ll hear dozens of philosophical nuggets you’ll have never heard of before. Downward Dog is nothing hugely remarkable, but for a fifth-tier, Jenna Elfman-less, mid-season ABC replacement, it’s a lot better than it should be.