“Who killed Laura Palmer?”

The words are guaranteed to evoke nostalgia into the hearts of those of my generation. This was the tagline to Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s murder mystery series that gave the word ‘surreal’ a new meaning.

I must have been about 15 years of age when the series debuted on Italian television, creating a furore in the heart of teenagers across Malta. Not that it was aimed at teenagers – anything but, in fact – but the edgy and somewhat risquée approach guaranteed that it got a lot of attention from this particular age group.

Given that Lynch was to evolve into anything but a mainstream director, Twin Peaks turned out to be a massive commercial hit. This was my first exposure to his work, and I was probably too young to actually ‘get it’, but this didn’t stop me from following the series religiously every Thursday, if memory serves me right.

Me, and a gaggle of other schoolgirls, despite the fact that Twin Peaks was hardly everyone’s cuppa. Pretty much all my friends chose to view it because of myriad sexual references.

Me, I loved the darkness of the characters, the way dreams morphed into nightmares, the way Lynch twisted all linearity of time, the way I was never sure whether something was actually happening or whether it was yet another hallucination.

Most of us were starved of anything that was slightly ‘weird’ or ‘out of the norm’ back then. Italian television offered a steady diet of straightforward love stories or action movies. Surrealism hadn’t yet made it into the dictionary.

Given all this, it is easy to figure out why Twin Peaks was such a hit. I would pore over every single scene and every character twist, my analysis giving rise to more questions. Lynch never quite gave us the answers we were looking for, something that added to the appeal of Twin Peaks no end.

Given that this was the early 1990s that I’m talking about, the series didn’t fail to leave a sociological ripple. Malta hardly approached anything that resembled secularism back then.

Moreover, none of us had been exposed to the Lynchian aesthetic as yet, so it was all viewed as even more weird than it actually was. Which is to say that it tipped the weird-o-meter into overdrive.

Given that Lynch was to evolve into anything but a mainstream director, Twin Peaks turned out to be a massive commercial hit

The result was several admonitions from the Sunday pulpits – and from the nuns at the school I attended – that watching Twin Peaks was a mortal sin and was sure to land us in the pits of hell. Back then, it gave the series that extra frisson of pleasure. Today, it’s just plain hilarious.

What brought back all these memories, you might ask. Over two decades later Lynch has seen fit to unveil a ‘director’s cut’, if you’d like to call it that. Not from the series, but from the following film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

I am in two minds about watching these, much as I had qualms about watching the actual film (I did, and did not enjoy it). I’m not a fan of follow-ups and spin-offs. Rather, I’m a firm believer in preserving the aura of something that I view as close to perfect.

And yet... and yet... there is the element of curiosity, of course. Which means that in the end, I will probably succumb. But not before reviewing the entire series, that is for sure.

ramona.depares@timesofmalta.com

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