Twin Peaks. Pilot episode

What happened to Laura Palmer? This became one of pop culture’s most discussed questions when this pilot for David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” was first aired on television. Kyle MacLachlan plays FBI agent Dale Cooper who comes into the sleepy small-town Twin Peaks to investigate Laura Palmer’s murder and discovers that underneath the banal facade the town hides a labyrinth of perversity and evil. As with “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet”, Lynch uses macabre humour to expose the psychological neurosis and psychosis that underlie the supposed normality of middle-class America. Both wickedly funny and savagely shocking, “Twin Peaks” radicalised the potential of the TV mini-series by introducing generic forms and psychological content that had previously been isolated to independent cinema. This is the initial pilot episode but it also stands alone as a feature film. “Twin Peaks” is a soap opera and police drama as reinterpreted by the leading surrealist of contemporary cinema.