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"This week marks the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, David Lynch&amp;#039;s (unfairly) maligned prequel movie to Twin Peaks. A flawed masterpiece, the main reason for its critical kicking was what it had to live up to. Running for just two seasons at the start of the &amp;#039;90s, Twin Peaks is routinely hailed as one of the most influential shows ever, and you still see its quirky fingerprints on much of what&amp;#039;s come since. Not just the weird stuff like The X Files and Lost, but in every show that takes its time with its characters and arcs, not caring about the sometimes-glacial pace it takes to get where it wanted to go. Twin Peaks Originally broadcast from April 8, 1990 to June 10, 1991       What sometimes gets forgotten amid all the talk of its influence is just how perfect the show was at its best. The eight episodes of season one, including the feature-length pilot, are as good as television gets. After the murder of prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) makes his way through the Douglas Firs and into a town shocked to its core. Paced at one-day-per-episode, Twin Peaks gradually reveals its secrets and those of its characters. And what characters - from Laura&amp;#039;s devastated father Leland (Ray Wise) and Lynch veteran Jack Nance as Pete Martell to infuriating minx Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) and her no-good father Ben (Richard Beymer). Even Lynch himself pops up as a hearing-impaired FBI boss Gordon Cole. Then there&amp;#039;s the Log Lady, MIKE and BOB, The Giant, The Man from Another Place and a host of other mysterious figures. Where Twin Peaks succeeded most was juggling its conventional, almost soapish dramas with an increasingly-supernatural bent, without ever sacrificing one at the altar of the other.   Who killed Laura Palmer? Well, that would be telling, and creators David Lynch and Mark Frost didn&amp;#039;t want to say. Not for a long time anyway, but network pressure meant that the viewers found out with a stunning reveal in episode seven of the second season. The Laura Palmer storyline was finally resolved two episodes later, in a scene so heartbreaking and gutwrenching that watching it still provokes tears after countless viewings. After that high, the show went into a mini-slump which still casts a shadow over the programme&amp;#039;s legacy. In truth, there are much fewer poor episodes than people usually remember. That said, the icky comedy of the Little Nicky adoption storyline and even ickier soap opera romance of James and Evelyn certainly feel like they go on forever. Things pick up swiftly though. David Duchovny underlines those X Files links when he&amp;#039;s introduced as transvestite FBI agent Denise (formerly Dennis) Bryson. Heather Graham is parachuted in as Cooper&amp;#039;s new love interest as Audrey starts making eyes at Billy Zane&amp;#039;s wealthy businessman. Guest directors including Diane Keaton (yes, that one), keep things ticking along as things regain shape, and by the time Cooper&amp;#039;s former partner Windom Earle rocks into town, Twin Peaks is almost back at its best.      Much as the show&amp;#039;s strength is in how it works as a whole, there are more brilliant set-piece scenes than there is space to mention them. The tragi-comic events at Laura Palmer&amp;#039;s funeral. Albert Rosenfield making his peace with Harry S. Truman. Cooper&amp;#039;s dream sequences featuring giants and dwarves, and of course, Audrey Horne&amp;#039;s cherry stalk tongue-twisting. There are also some absurdly quotable bits of dialogue (&amp;quot;Black as midnight on a moonless night&amp;quot;... &amp;quot;Through the darkness of future past&amp;quot;... &amp;quot;J&amp;#039;ai une \u00E2me solitaire&amp;quot;), fantastic food (baguettes with brie and butter, cops&amp;#039; donuts, cherry pie), and more laugh-out-lines than loads of pure comedies. As with much of Lynch&amp;#039;s work, Angelo Badalamenti&amp;#039;s score is a key ingredient in evoking moods and bringing the stories to life. From the small-town opening theme to Julee Cruise&amp;#039;s Roadhouse torch songs, not to mention Jimmy Scott&amp;#039;s stunning &amp;#039;Sycamore Trees&amp;#039; in the final episode (more on that later), the jazzy strains reinforced everything you saw on screen. It&amp;#039;s impossible to talk through all of the Twin Peaks storylines that tangle over its 30 episodes, and trying to deconstruct its simple complexity on paper wouldn&amp;#039;t achieve much. For all the strangeness and cool and the ease with which it intertwined characters and stories, it&amp;#039;s Twin Peaks&amp;#039; heart and its spirit that makes it so wonderful. Two years ago, The Guardian caught up with some of the cast and crew as the second season got its belated UK DVD release. &amp;quot;Twin Peaks gave me everything I have as an actor,&amp;quot; said Lara Flynn Boyle, who played Laura&amp;#039;s best friend Donna. &amp;quot;It put me where I am now because it was so beautifully soulful.&amp;quot; She hits the nail on the head.      Like Lynch&amp;#039;s work before and after - from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive - the main themes of light and dark, dreams and waking, the duality between and within people were explored and pushed towards and beyond their strangest metaphorical and visual limits. The final episode of the show was divisive, to say the least, ending on a cliffhanger so steep and upsetting that people are still enthralled and angered by it to this day. If not matching up to the quality of the show was one reason for the disdain towards Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, another was surely the fact that it didn&amp;#039;t neatly tie up the unsettling finale. There&amp;#039;s still talk that things may someday be picked up &amp;quot;25 years later&amp;quot;, but that would probably be a mistake. Cooper&amp;#039;s My Life, My Tapes book penned by Mark Frost, and Jennifer (daughter of David) Lynch&amp;#039;s disturbing Secret Diary of Laura Palmer add perfectly to the universe without taking anything away from Peaks as a whole or that ending. What did you think of Twin Peaks? Weirdly wonderful or worryingly wacky? Leave your comments below: "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/twin-peaks/news/a403022/twin-peaks-tube-talk-gold/>