Twin Peaks was an American dramatic television series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The show is set in the fictional town of Twin Peaks in northeast Washington, while the filming took place in northwest Washington.

It aired on the ABC network in the United States from April 8, 1990 until June 10, 1991. Some episodes were written/directed by Lynch and Frost, but most were directed by guests. The show was co-produced by Aaron Spelling's production company and ran for 30 episodes over two seasons.

Twin Peaks' central plot line tells the story of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and his investigation into the shocking murder of a popular young local schoolgirl, Laura Palmer.

The program portrays small-town America via a tight-knit community of unsophisticates and eccentrics. The pilot was filmed in the real-life towns of North Bend and Snoqualmie, not far from Seattle, Washington, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

The story begins with the famous discovery of Laura's body, washed up on the lakeshore, "wrapped in plastic". As the investigation unfolds, it gradually exposes each Twin Peaks resident to unwelcome scrutiny from Agent Cooper and the men of the local Sheriff's Department and reveals a disturbing dark side to the lives of many of the Twin Peaks citizens.

As with much of Lynch's other work (notably Blue Velvet), Twin Peaks explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life beneath it. The program borrowed heavily from American soap operas in its melodramatic presentation of its characters' morally dubious activities. However, like all Lynch's previous and subsequent work, there exists a strong moral seriousness and a deep vein of surrealism that informs the totality of the production.

Twin Peaks is particularly memorable for Kyle MacLachlan's performance as special agent Dale Cooper, who uttered one of the more popular lines in the series which became a catch phrase: "Damn  fine cup of coffee... and hot!"

As the mystery unfolds, we are introduced to a cast of characters who range from the quirky to the decidedly sinister. They include:

   • long-suffering gas station owner Big Ed Hurley and his drape-obsessed, one-eyed wife Nadine, whose screeching exhortation "Those drapes aren't gonna hang 'emselves" became another popular Peaks catchphrase;
   • the eccentric Log Lady, who apparently receives psychic messages from a log that she carries everywhere;
   • sinister trucker Leo Johnson (Eric Da Re), a violent drug runner, and his beautiful wife Shelley, who is secretly having an affair with Laura's boyfriend Bobby Briggs;
   • beautiful but troubled cafe owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton), who is Big Ed's secret lover; and
   • oddball psychiatrist Dr Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn).

Other catch phrases were: "There's a fish in the percolator," and "She's dead! Wrapped in plastic!" (which became the title of the long-running fan magazine).

The casting of the show was another Lynch 'trademark', in that, like almost all of Lynch's projects, it features members of the loose ensemble of Lynch's favorite character actors, including Jack Nance, Grace Zabriskie and Everett McGill. It is also notable for the casting of several veteran actors who had long been absent from the screen, including '50s movie stars Piper Laurie and Russ Tamblyn and former Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton.

Another popular feature of the series was Frost and Lynch's use of repeating and sometimes mysterious motifs - trees, water, coffee, donuts, owls, ducks, fire - and numerous embedded references to other films and TV shows, such as The Fugitive (the one-armed man), The Twilight Zone (mysteriously malfunctioning electrical equipment), and The Patty Duke Show (the phenomenon of identical cousins).

Lynch also incorporated a number of random events that occurred during filming, most notably in the scene where Cooper first examines Laura's body. When the scene was filmed, a malfunctioning fluorescent light above the table flickered constantly, but Lynch decided not to replace it since he liked the disconcerting effect that it created. Also, during the take, one of the minor actors misheard a line and, thinking he was being asked his name, he told Cooper his real name instead of saying his line, briefly throwing the cast off balance. Lynch was reportedly so pleased with this unsettling moment that he kept the 'mistake' in the scene.

The series was set in 1989, with each episode - barring occasional exceptions - representing a single day in the chronology.

From Wikipedia