Twin Peaks season 3 premiere: as it happened... again

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04:24 Diane. 4:23am, May 22nd. Now leaving the town of Twin Peaks…

04:23 Thanks for reading, it's been fun (for me at least). I am very intrigued to see what my dreams will be like. Hope yours are sweet or, if not, at least mysterious, unusual and vivid, like a good episode of Twin Peaks.

04:21 I'll now go back and update that Laura Palmer/electric tree transcript but beyond that I think I better call it a night because the birds are making a right racket outside and the sky is getting increasingly light.

04:17 I loved how it came back to the Roadhouse, with that classic Twin Peaks melodrama-meets-ethereal vibe. Chromatics were a nice update on Julee Cruise, very much still in the same spirit. That scene made me feel warm and fuzzy which, perhaps strangely, is one of the things Twin Peaks always did for me, and which I loved it for. And which the rest of this opening episode(s) has lacked a little. I hope there's more of the town of Twin Peaks and the people who live there in the coming episodes.

04:14 Ok, so, wow, to assess. That was good, I really enjoyed it. Started out like a David Lynch film, then gave us a decent chunk of semi-explanation about BOB/Cooper. A lot of Red Room/Black Lodge scenes. It will be interesting to see whether they are a regular feature or were just necessary to set up the rest of the series. On one hand, I kind of love them - and we have an excellent new character in the electric tree - but you wouldn't want to rely too heavily on them unless they are going to be a bit more varied.

04:09 They need a long play out due to the massive cast list.

04:07 This song is Shadow by Chromatics by the way. Very nice. Like a modern Julee Cruise.

They're playing us out as the credits role and it feels pretty Twin Peaksy - romantic, sad, ethereal...

04:06 We're in the Roadhouse Bar. The music is a bit more modern but here's James and Shelly. Nice to see a couple of familiar faces.

And there's Lost Highway's Balthazar Getty, shooting Shelly a look.

04:04 After a quick breather floating in the glass box, Cooper continues his journey god knows where. At least it looks as if he isn't the thing from the box that escaped and started tearing Tracy and the college guy to pieces.

04:03 Laura Palmer's mum is watching lions eat a Buffalo alive on TV. Nice. I guess nothing phases her any more.

04:01 Cooper has fallen through the cracks in the floor of the Black Lodge and ended up... guess where? In the glass box in New York City that we started with. Awesome. We're hearing Tracy and the college guy's conversation again. they're not dead. Yet. Cooper seems to have moved on.

03:59 "Something's wrong." says MIKE. "My doppelganger," says the electric tree. Uh-oh. You can't trust anyone in this place, not even an electric tree.

03:56 Cooper stumbles across Leland Palmer. "Find Laura," he says.

03:55 Back once again with the electric tree. "Go now! Go now!" it tells Cooper who tries but can't find his way out. I have a terrible sense of direction so can relate to this. I would never get out of there. I'll probably have nightmares about this tonight.

03:53 Cooper has just been on the phone to someone who mentioned that Cooper had met with Major Garland Briggs - that's Bobby Briggs's dad, who I think is dead (I'm pretty sure the actor who played him is anyway).

"You're going back in tomorrow, and I will deal with BOB again." Or BE with BOB again? Not quite sure. But someone wants this Cooper back in the Black Lodge and that would mean our Cooper getting out.

03:49 Daria's dead. Cooper's looking more BOB-like by the minute. And yet, and yet, he seems less crazed, less in it for the kicks and more business-like, so I'm still not completely sure how this is working.

03:47 "I'm supposed to get pulled back into what they call The Black Lodge...but I'm not going." Surely, this Cooper IS BOB!

03:45 So the long-haired Cooper does actually go by the name Cooper. Sounds like his girlfriend Daria has been plotting to kill him, funded by someone whose motives she claims not to know. He's not happy.

03:41 Initial thoughts though - the long-haired Cooper could be BOB and the Cooper inside the Black Lodge is the real Cooper. I'm just not sure that the long-haired Cooper is quite mental enough to be BOB...

Hard to say what the hell the tree is at this stage but the implication is clear, that BOB/the long-haired Cooper is supposed to return to the Black Lodge and, if so, our Cooper can get out.

Unsurprisingly though, the other Cooper's not keen.

03:40 Ok, a fullish transcript here:

We're back in the Red Room - as I understand it, the waiting room of The Black Lodge.

Cooper is sitting with MIKE, the one-armed man.

MIKE: "Is it future or is it past? Someone is here."

Wait... It's LAURA PALMER!

Laura: "Hello Agent Cooper. You can go out now. Do you recognise me?"

Cooper: "Are you Laura Palmer?"

Laura: "I feel like I know her but sometimes my arms bend back." Classic Laura.

Cooper: "Who are you?"

Laura: "I am Laura Palmer."

Cooper: "But Laura Palmer is dead."

Laura: "I am dead. Yet I live." Pulls off her face to expose a glowing light underneath. Seems happy enough about it.

Cooper: "When can I go?"

Laura kisses him, then whispers in his ear. All the great Laura tropes here.

He doesn't like the sound of that.

Suddenly she starts having some kind of convulsions. The curtains are shuddering madly and Laura, screaming horribly, is ripped up into the air and away.

MIKE introduces Cooper to what I am calling the electric tree because its branches fizz with sparks. And it's a tree. With a fleshy lump on top, which it speaks from. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt and call it a head.

MIKE: "The evolution of the arm."

Tree: "I am the arm and I sound like this." Makes a kind of Hannibal Lecter fava beans and a nice Chianti sound.

"Do you remember your doppelganger?"

"He must come back before you can go out."

03:37 We're back. I'm going to go return to that bit later, sorry, but it seems too important not to cover properly. There was an electric tree for god's sake.

03:34 Thank god for ad breaks. Ok, bear with me, while I try to get down as much of that long, intense and Peak Twin Peaks scene as I can...

03:22 It's Hawk being guided by the Log Lady over the phone. "The stars turn and a time presents itself," she says. Damn right.

03:20 Some delicious scenes of torchlight on pine trees.

03:20 The Cooper-looking man is telling his cronies "I don't need anything. I WANT." In this case, he wants information. Seems like a bad-ass, but not quite BOB I don't think.

03:18 I can already see there are going to be a hell of a lot of strands to this and that we are probably going to need to go back and analyse some of this again - and come up with lots of delicious fan theories!

03:16 Then the guy who looks like Cooper turned up at Matthew Lillard's wife's house and he shot her.

03:16 We just saw a guy covered all over in black - clothes, skin, all one colour - sitting in a prison cell. Then he kind of faded out and then just his head reappeared and then drifted away. Full Lynch.

03:14 WE HAVE FULL LYNCH. I REPEAT: WE HAVE FULL DAVID LYNCH.

03:12 Ok, so Matthew Lillard is now telling his wife he wasn't really at the apartment, it was just a dream. She thinks he's been having an affair and is happy for him to be sent down. It would be just typical in a David Lynch drama, though, for you to leave fingerprints somewhere from a dream.

03:11 We're back. The sort of humming, thrumming noises David Lynch always has in the background of otherwise silent moments are genius. I wonder who's responsible for them, and how they make them.

03:07 Right, time for a beer.

03:06 Ok, so the final scene before the break saw a police officer shifting a box out of the boot of a car, shining his flashlight on what looked like a scrap of meat sitting in a dark patch of something and pronouncing "Wolf." At this stage, I do not know what the hell that means...

03:04 The police are searching Matthew Lillard's house after his prints were found all over the flat containing the head and body.

03:03 With the first hour almost up though, I'm very glad they're giving us a double-length episode. Would feel left hanging at this point, plus they're going to have to deliver a little bit more actual Twin Peaks before the end to satisfy fans I reckon.

03:00 It's weird but this feels more like a David Lynch movie than an episode of Twin Peaks. Maybe because so much of it has been set outside Twin Peaks, maybe because 25 years later stuff just looks more polished. Either way, that's not a criticism, I'm really enjoying it and already intrigued about several mysteries...

02:55 Deputy Chief Hawk is looking good. Like, the same but with grey hair. Deputy Andy and Lucy still as endearingly air-headed as ever (Andy may have been putting away a few extra donuts). But still no sign of either of the Sherrifs Truman. Intriguing...

02:54 The cops have just arrested Matthew Lillard - ie, Shaggy from the Scooby Doo films. Shaggy would never kill two women, cut off one of their heads and put it in a bed with the other's body. I mean, even if he was really stoned.

02:53 Ok, so, I should have mentioned this before but the body and the head in the bed don't match. Something untoward is going on there, I'll wager.

02:52 "Hawk, my log has a message for you: something is missing and you have to find it. It has something to do with Special Agent Dale Cooper. The way you will find it has something to do with your heritage."

THE LOG LADY IS BACK!

02:46 Ok, so that was pretty horrific. The cops found a woman's body in bed, with one eye socket missing. Oh, and when they pulled the bedsheets back she also had her head detatched from her body, just in case. Pretty sure she's dead.

02:41 And this scene with a slightly dense woman getting cops to investigate a strange smell in a neighbour's appartment is a bit Fargo.

02:40 That box scene reminded me quite a bit of The X-Files.

02:39 Silent (almost silent) shots of corridors. I am a sucker for these. So Lynchian.

02:38 Something's out of the box... a weird blurry figure - could be an alien, just saying - broke out, attacked them, lots of blood. At least they weren't wearing their clothes, blood is a nightmare to wash out.

02:35 SOMETHING'S IN THE BOX!

02:34 She's getting undressed. He's not watching the glass box. Typical if something appeared in there now...

02:33 He's stopped watching the box and started watching Tracy. Who can blame him?

Passionate smooching ensues.

02:32 The mystery is getting cooler and weirder. The unnamed young guy is out of college and is earning money by being photographed staring at a glass box, waiting to see if anything appears inside. So far, nothing...

02:30 The weird camera facility again. Tracy is back with more coffee. But what's happened to the security guard? "Weird."

"Does this mean by any chance I can go in there with you?", asks Tracy, who has clearly done something with the guard...

02:26 It was a casual ass-kicking, the tone remains very TP - quiet, weird, punctuated with sudden violence.

02:25 Ok, this is great. Kyle MacLachlan but with long hair, a leather jacket and a bad attitude, coming out to a cabin in the woods and kicking ass.

He has what may well be superhuman strength.

This is cool. Very Twin Peaks but also new.

02:23 Two Sheriff Trumans? Sheriffs Truman?

02:21 Ah, we may have an answer to the question of how the new Sheriff Truman actor will fit it. "I'm ere t see Sheriff Truman," says a visitor to the police station. "Which one?" asks Lucy the receptionist (who hardly looks any different. "On'e sick and one is fishing." Intriguing.

02:20 He's eating space cakes.

02:20 So the Horne brothers are still together, although Jerry's looking a lot more like an ancient trawlerman than he used to.

02:19 So there's something very intriguing going on in this "top secret" facility. Something to do with photographs and data cards but hard to say beyond that.

This Tracy character is interesting though. Looks like she might be playing innocent but trying to infiltrate this place. "You're a bad girl, Tracy," says the dude being photogrpahed.

"Try me," she says. Sizzle

(The actress was in Californication I believe)

02:11 Dr Jacoby back and looking good for his age. About to do some digging in the woods, apparently...

02:10 A black and white scene. Aged Cooper and the Giant, the Giant speaking backwards, Cooper as normal.

Giant: "Listen to the sounds on the old gramophone. It is in our house now

"It all cannot be said out loud now. Remember 430.

"Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone."

Cooper: "I understand." (I don't)

Giant: "You are far away."

Cooper disappears.

Boom. Twin Peaks is back.

02:06 And then THAT theme tune - but a NEW title sequence. All Red Room and waterfalls.

02:05 More flashbacks to the original series, including my framed photo of Laura in the trophy cabinet...

02:04 We're back in the Red Room! With young Cooper and backwards-speaking Laura... It is happening again!

02:03 "With flashing images and disturbing scenes" - you bet your ass!

02:02

01:59 Ok people, just a single ad break lies between us and the NEW SERIES OF TWIN PEAKS!

01:57 Watching the end of an episode of the brilliant eerie Westworld. You have to think high-concept shows like this owe a debt to Twin Peaks.

01:54 When I first watched Twin Peaks, there was no internet, let alone the concept of a live blog. How bizarre.

01:51 Unless of course they've changed it, remixed it into a drum n bass version or something...

01:50 And then the theme tune would come on, the silhouette of that bird in the tree, and I'd get goosebumps, like I know I'm going to again tonight...

01:47 Ok, so we are 15 minutes away from NEW TWIN PEAKS, 25 years after it last aired. I remember watching it vividly. My whole week was basically waiting for Tuesday night to come back round and then I had a whole routine around it. I usually watched it in the spare room so I could take in every single weird, wonderful, terrifying, melodramatic, romantic moment and for some reason I would always make a hot chocolate to drink with it. I was 17 and didn't really do coffee...

01:43 Cooper looks like a haunted man, possibly quite literally, and I hope we haven't see the last of his boyish enthusiasm. We need THIS Agent Cooper more than ever...

01:42 I'm really not sure what to expect tonight. Kyle MacLachlan says it's not going to be a trip down memory lane and the tone of the teaser trailer, well, it's kind of Twin Peaks but it's only part of it, only the dark and scary part...

01:33 Nothing weird about that. SHE WAS DEAD WHEN I FOUND HER!

01:30 Ok, so at the risk of looking just a tiny bit obsessive, this my desk at work, and has been for the past couple of years. Note the framed photo on the left...

01:17 Who here is hoping for a nostalgic trip back down memory lane tonight? I must admit I kind of was - but tough luck, apparently...

"We're going to dip into a world that's changed," says Kyle MacLachlan. "This is not a nostalgic trip back down memory lane by any means, these are new stories and a new direction so that's part of the excitement I think."

He probably has a point, if you want nostalgia you go back and watch old episodes and clips, which is what I've been doing for the last few days. NEW TWIN PEAKS (can you believe that's actually a thing?!) should be just that, something new. Can't bloody wait!

01:12 Ok, back with you and no, I am not on the damn fine coffee, despite the fact that I am blogging in the UK and therefore won't be finishing until 4am, because I want to be able to sleep afterwards. So I've just made a big Gin and Tonic and may just have a beer or two in the fridge for later (if this blog becomes any more incoherent than it already is, you'll know why...)

01:01 Right, ONE HOUR TO GO! Excuse me while I get something to steady my nerves...

00:58 And if you're new to Twin Peaks, firstly, good luck tonight, and secondly, here's a crash course in BOB to get you up to speed...

00:55 Of course, that raises a big, big question: 25 years on is Cooper still possessed by BOB? He certainly looks pretty haunted in the glimpses we've seen of him but whether this is I'm-possessed-by-a-demon type haunted, I-used-to-be-possessed-by-a-demon type haunted or just I've-seen-some-serious-shit-down-the-years type haunted, it's hard to say.

In fact, I'm not sure whether we actually know if the real Cooper actually made it out of The Black Lodge what with all the doppelgangers flying around...

00:48 "How's Annie? How's Annie?" Christ, remember the first time you saw that?!

00:47 Remember THIS shocking final scene...?!

00:45 Some of those missing cast raise a few questions, too. If Sheriff Truman has a new face, will that simply be ignored or will David Lynch try to work it into the story in some way? It wouldn't be the first time he'd used different actors to play the same character - in Lost Highway, Bill Pullman inexplicably turns into Balthazar Getty (who, incidentally, is part of the new cast of Twin Peaks) halfway through the film.

And then of course, there's BOB. I suppose we don't necessarily need to see him (although perhaps there'll be old footage of Frank Silva) but it's hard to imagine that his presence won't at least be felt looming over proceedings, especially given how the last series of Twin Peaks ended...

00:40 There are some notable exceptions to the returning cast, though. No Lara Flynn Boyle, AKA Laura Palmer's best friend Donna Hayward. Also, no Man From Another Place - you know, the backwards-speaking dancing dude from The Black Lodge (played by Michael J Anderson)...

No Frank Silva, who played BOB, of course - he sadly passed away just a few years after the original series of Twin Peaks aired. And perhaps worst of all, no Michael Ontkean, who played local law enforcement chief, Sheriff Harry S Truman. Sheriff Truman will be back though, but played by Robert Forster, who was apparently offered the role the first time around but was forced to turn it down due to other commitments.

00:37 Pretty much all of the original cast will be back. Here's a refresher, and a look at how they've changed over the last 25 years (haven't we all?)

Click the image to see the full article.

00:23 Basically, though, apart from those Italians, nobody knows very much at all about what to expect from this new Twin Peaks.

But there are a few things we do know...

00:18 I say there have been no previews but actually some viewers in Italy may have gotten the first look at the episode as Sky Italia accidentally dropped it early on their on-demand services. I reckon someone is going to get a late-night visit from BOB, if David Lynch has anything to do with it.

Not fun.

00:15 Evening all. I'm Paul and I'll be joining you for tonight's historic - no, I don't think that's too strong a word - premiere of the return of David Lynch and Mark Frost's seminal, surreal, scary, dreamy, melodramatic, romantic world of Twin Peaks.

It's hard to believe that 25 years on - just as Laura Palmer promised Agent Cooper during his adventure in the Black Lodge - we're actually going back. And I must say I'm really happy that the whole thing's been kept a secret, there have been no previews, and we're all heading into this together.