WHEN THE TWILIGHT IS GONE [492]

Having just completed watching it for the first time, I have come to think of “Twin Peaks”, the renowned series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, as “peak TV”, because I do not know what more television can do after this series, and I know I won’t have the same experience from a TV show again, even when I start watching this one again.

I have watched “Twin Peaks” with my family for the last few months, the lack of inspiration in the Christmas TV schedules presenting an opportunity to take up a recommendation from my sister, who would guide us through the series. Unfortunately, I initially missed the start of this experience, later watching the opening two episodes in my own time, because I had gone tenpin bowling – the “going out” part was almost as out of character for me as the bowling – but I chimed with the “vibes” this show was giving off, later realising that our weekend watching of the series had become an escape I wish I had found earlier.

Then David Lynch died. Already the great American Surrealist artist, and that rarity of a film director that was universally liked by people who worked with him, the outpouring of emotion in the media, both traditional and social, was sudden, and unanimously positive. I had seen little of Lynch’s work before starting “Twin Peaks”, having only seen “Eraserhead”, and now I felt remorse for not knowing to have watched more of his films, having already been thinking the same about those of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger – having a degree in film studies doesn’t avoid there being gaps in your personal canon, especially if those films didn’t come up while you were studying.

I am writing this to mark the experience I am having with this series, and not to act as a guide. I came across this passage from my diary: “I have found a TV show I don’t need to watch critically to get the most from it – as the day winds down, I can relax enough to watch it properly. It has made me realise I don’t dream much when I am asleep, but I daydream a lot – a resource I do nothing with, perhaps to my own discredit. I wish I knew to watch ‘Twin Peaks’ earlier.”

I don’t think I can adequately describe the story of the series as well as has been done endlessly elsewhere, but for due diligence, the inciting incident of “Twin Peaks” was the death of Laura Palmer, how it affects the small town in which she lived, and how the town affects the FBI agent sent to investigate. Notoriously, the killer was revealed to be Laura’s father, possessed by a force named “BOB”, when the ABC network required the killer to be revealed, itself killing the main driver of the series’ atmosphere – the follow-up feature film, “Fire Walk With Me”, breathed life back into Laura Palmer, even in death. The third series, broadcast twenty-six years after the first, told a larger story of the evil that perpetrated the original series, while also being a surreal, Surrealist repudiation of the lore built around the series and its characters, and of the expectation garnered it after so long away. To say any more would be giving too much away, apart from Kyle MacLachlan’s performance as Special Agent Dale Cooper causing me to start drinking coffee.

I scrambled around to understand how a show like this appeared in 1990: TV audiences fragmenting with growing popularity of cable TV, allowing more types of story to be made; popularising the filming of TV dramas in a more filmic way, arguably also started by “Miami Vice”; and its appearing concurrently with “The Simpsons”, a show that continues to look like no other. 

I became more fully plugged in to the “vibes” of “Twin Peaks” when I realised that notions of “suspension of disbelief” do not really exist here. It is not “weird” – a word that only ever appears with surface analysis – and it does not have a surreal or dreamlike quality: it is intentionally surreal and dreamlike. You are not being rewarded for getting references made by characters or the plot – this is the show that will be quoted by others. You are not going to be given episodes tied neatly with a bow – once the first two seasons were described to me as a parody of a US soap opera, particularly with the continuing use of a musical underscore to heighten the mood, I relaxed into its rhythm more easily.

I initially thought of “Twin Peaks” as being “peak TV” once I heard that the French film journal “Cahiers du Cinema”, in 2019, declared the third season as being the greatest film of the 2010s. I agree with that – it is an episodic film told in eighteen parts, the musical performances at the end of most episodes being the only sop to notions of structure, something that couldn’t be done in 1990-91 while on a network filled with the furniture of “previously on...”, “next time on...” and breaks for commercials. TV screens are bigger, TV sound is better, more easily able to replicate the cinematic experience. The transition from TV drama to film is complete, but the transition from weekly episodes to series box sets is there too, despite our family watching of the show at weekends.

ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE [489]

"freeze-dried"

A good coffee will not need milk or sugar, as far as I am concerned – at least, that is my conclusion from only just starting to drink coffee for the first time in my life.

Watching other people contend with and compromise in drinking coffee kept me safely with soft drinks up to now, my sweet tooth being happily satisfied, mostly by The Coca-Cola Company.

But tastes change with age, as does your body – I felt mine becoming less impressed by fizzy drinks, and so a solution had to be found.

I rarely tried accustoming myself to hot drinks. Soft drinks have uniformity of taste, but they both cost and weigh more to carry home from a shop, because they need to be pre-prepared and ready to drink. Hot drinks take time to prepare and perfect.

That may be obvious, but I avoided hot drinks for this reason. I prefer just to add hot water and be done with it. Instant drinking chocolate, usually by Cadbury, was the hot drink I had the most before now, but even then, only occasionally, getting bored of forcing Dairy Milk into me. Tea has always been the opposite, too weak for my tastes no matter how long I steep the bag, although a peppermint infusion is much preferable for me to standard black or white tea.

Modifying the taste of your tea or coffee by adding milk, sugar or whatever else led me to think that changing the tea or coffee itself would be more appropriate – like I have done with soft drinks up to now, having a satisfying taste that can stand on its own was what I wanted.

So why coffee, and why coffee now? My family started watching “Twin Peaks” just before Christmas 2024, a very welcome, and endlessly fascinating, alternative to what TV schedules had planned in the festive period. In the character of Special Agent Dale Cooper, the show’s creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, with actor Kyle MacLachlan, created a character who, among all his fastidiousness and intuitive methods, had a love of coffee so great it sold the concept to me. A stronger, more full-bodied taste was what I was looking for, and on the one occasion someone at work asked me how I liked it, I said without hesitation, “black as midnight on a moonless night”.

I first decided to sample the coffee at work one day, not having realised tea and coffee, and milk and sugar, were being supplied in the break rooms, having never needed to look before. However, the three types of instant coffee on offer – “smooth”, “decaf” and “rich”, all apparently from Kenco – were terrible to me. The “smooth” and “decaf” granules smelled burnt, and the “rich” coffee I made was too bitter for more than an initial sip.

The coffee I have arrived at was what we had at home, recommended by my sister: Percol smooth Colombian coffee – “roast 3”, apparently. One teaspoon produces a perfectly nice cup of coffee to me, a sense of warmth and taste without the bitterness, and without all the fuss. No Americano, flat white, long black or other type of complication, and no snobbishness or crema spoons – just a Platonic ideal of a cup of coffee.

The only addition I need is an insulated mug to keep it warm.

SHUT YOUR FACE UP AND DO IT [354]

“The following film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit this screen and edited for content.”

Well, this can’t be good, can it?

It has been a sufficiently long time since I saw Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop”, the violent science fiction satire of corporate power and possible Christ analogy that became enormously popular upon its release in 1987, spawning sequels, TV series and a 2014 remake that I had completely forgotten about.

Owning a copy of the special-edition Blu-ray set released by Arrow Films in 2019, I decided, instead of the R-rated original theatrical version or the original “Director’s Cut” that was violent enough to be rated X when submitted for review, to watch the third version that was seemingly included for both historical and comedy purposes: the television edit that removed nearly all of the gore, and all of the swearing, recounted in compilation videos and comparisons to poke ridicule, particularly in replacing more innocuous words like “scumbag” and “asshole” with “crumb-bag” and “air-head”.

I am happy to report that the TV version of “RoboCop”, presented from a Digital Betacam (DigiBeta) broadcast master tape that almost resembles HD quality, with fadeouts for breaks included, is almost as enjoyable as Verhoeven’s intended vision, and it is possible to watch it with children... which is not at all surprising, given the PG rating that applied to the two sequels that followed, and the existence of the Saturday morning cartoon broadcast in 1988 in the same vein as “The Real Ghostbusters” and “Rambo: The Force of Freedom”. 

This does appear to be the context in which it was compiled: Christopher Griffiths’ liner notes for the Arrow Films set mentions that some UK audiences thought they had seen the TV version broadcast on ITV on a Saturday afternoon, when this was actually a showing of the 1994 “RoboCop” live-action TV series. Admittedly, the lack of swearing made it feel like a pilot for a TV show, or an episode of “EastEnders”, a soap opera with a vaguely “gritty” setting where people should swear more than they actually do, but this was before TV drama started matching cinema on content from the 1990s, starting with “Twin Peaks”, “ER” and “The Sopranos”.

Paul Verhoeven intended the over-the-top violence in “RoboCop” to be satirical – from the news bulletins and TV advertisements to the levels of violence on the streets, it is just part of society. Now, this view is essentially held at length: the shooting of the executive Kinney by the ED-209 robot at the beginning is shown sparingly and without blood, the aftermath of his body on top of the Delta City display is only seen in the background of one shot, but it is still clear it didn’t end well. We see Emil, the gangster disfigured by toxic waste, but we don’t see him get hit by a car, or the effects of that, but we do see one criminal abruptly thrown by RoboCop into a fridge, that made me realise that “Looney Tunes” is the level of violence pitched at the audience, but with too much gore for that to be obvious in the TV version.

I did wonder if the reduction of violence and swearing would mean I would focus more on RoboCop’s rediscovery of his earlier memories as the police officer Murphy, as these scenes remain intact, including the estate agent’s display of his former home, but there is no difference, for our sense of the world that turned Murphy’s body into a product remains intact, including all the times where RoboCop and the police itself are called a product.

For a film that has no fat on it in any version, the TV version of “RoboCop” feels pared to the bone, but only so that as many people can watch it as possible. There is no need for such a version to exist now, in an age of home video and streaming, and TV showings of films, at least in the UK, take place at the appropriate time, and in the correct aspect ratio. Having said that, ITV’s first showing on UK television used this censored version, and viewer complaints led to this being replaced with the theatrical version in future, with some cuts for violence of course.