Twin Peaks (2017) [Showtime/Sky Atlantic] [** Spoilers **]

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

But isn't the aim of any TV series to be a commercial success and make money?

For Showtime? Sure, and it seems the show has achieved that to some degree if their boost in online subscribers is to be believed. For David Lynch? **** no. And as a viewer I'd rather a show be a go-for-broke artistic accomplishment over it being guaranteed another season (both would be nice).

This is actually a central reason I find TV a less exciting medium than film, most of the time. TV is an aggressively commercial medium, and even great shows often slot neatly into broad generic markers (even a magnum opus like The Wire is a police / crime thriller at its heart, even if it ultimately transcends that). A few oddities from the continent aside - an Out 1 here, a Dekalog there - TV's serialised nature and multi-writer/director nature can create some terrific drama, but despite the luxurious running times often feels tethered to genre and indeed commercial storytelling norms.

While the situation has improved in recent years with a number of artistically assured programmes - Louis CK's two shows, for example, feel like auteur productions - there is little of the more freeform, formally ambitious fare that is commonplace in cinema. Film has a production environment that allows for the funding and distribution of 'arthouse' film alongside the more commercial fare.

Which is why Twin Peaks season 3 feels like a shot in the arm, and for me a much needed one. It has little regard for the conventions of the medium, instead indulging in the wildest ideas Lynch and Frost can conjure up. It is happy to dedicate 20 minutes to a sequence of relentless surrealism, or bring in Hollywood stars for utterly bizarre one-scene cameos. It is as if not more concerned with mise en scene as it is with providing a weekly narrative hook- and even in a world that gives us great shows like Transparent, Better Call Saul, or Fargo, it exists in its own plain. That this got made in its current form, with a major producer apparently giving one of American cinema's most determinedly non-commercial filmmakers free creative reign, is as unlikely as it is exciting.

All that said, and as someone who finds the abstract nature of this season pretty extraordinary, I don't think it is entirely without traditional hooks either. The Dougie stuff is taking its time, but its moving forward and offering clear resolution to a two-decade old cliffhanger (from a show always known for being a bit weird). Narrative arcs for several characters have emerged, as have a few central mysteries that Lynch and Frost are checking in on (most) episodes. That the show is happier to indulge in sizeable, odd asides is undoubtedly, shall we say, divisive - and I can easily see how this is frustrating to many viewers. But a defiant refusal to adhere to TV norms - commercially and formally - is one of its many pleasures for me so far