Newspapers across the United States provided extensive coverage of Twin Peaks when the show debuted on the ABC Television Network in April 1990. Critics, who had never seen anything like it on television, enthusiastically reported on David Lynch and Mark Frost’s masterpiece. California’s The Modesto Bee newspaper put the show’s stars on the cover of their “TV Week” supplement for April 8-14, 1990 with a cover story by Jay Bobbin from Tribune Media Services.
TWIN PEAKS IN “TV WEEK” FOR APRIL 8-14, 1990 | COVER
Serving Northern California, The Modesto Bee was founded in 1884 as the Daily Evening News. Charles K. McClatchy and McClatchy Newspapers purchased the paper in 1924 and merged it with the Modesto News-Herald. In 1933, the paper changed its name to the Modesto Bee and News-Herald, and in 1975 abbreviated the name on its masthead to The Modesto Bee. Its current owner is the descendant firm, McClatchy Company, an American newspaper corporation.
“TV Week” is the television magazine of the Modesto Bee which offers a weekly programming guide for newspaper subscribers akin to the “TV Guide.” For the April 8-14, 1990 issue, Joan Chen as Josie Packard and Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry S. Truman are featured on the cover. The caption under their photo reads, “‘Twin Peaks’ intrigue in a small town marks new ABC series debuting tonight.”
The photo of Chen and Ontkean is part of season one publicity photos and was captured on the Blue Pine Lodge set in Van Nuys, California.
The Mauve Zone has the original full-color image which is part of a sequence of shots with Chen and Ontkean.
This is an alternate take from the same photo session with the actors.
TWIN PEAKS IN “TV WEEK” FOR APRIL 8-14, 1990 | COVER STORY
On page 116, you’ll find Jay Bobbin’s syndicated story titled “A hot, new ensemble drama.” An official Television Critics Association member, Bobbin is a “TV and movie addict, nationally syndicated writer. Loves watching, then writing – and talking with those who make what he sees.”
The story includes an early publicity shot of Joan Chen, Michael Ontkean, Kyle MacLachlan and Piper Laurie which was taken by an ABC / Capital Cities photographer named PK at some point in May 1989. The original caption for this image (26665A-5-15) read:
“It takes a murder to reveal the passion, greed and intrigue that exists just below the surface of a seemingly quiet small town in the Pacific Northwest. Joan Chen, Michael Ontkean, Kyle MacLachlan and Piper Laurie star in the ensemble drama, “TWIN PEAKS,” airing on the ABC Television Network.”
Bobbin’s article is split into two pages with the first part being published on page 116.
Of the many shows starting up in television’s spring season, the most-talked-about has been “Twin Peaks,” and it’s finally here.
Described by many critics who have previewed it a cross between “Peyton Place” and the film “Blue Velvet,” the unusual new ABC series begins with a two-hour opener tonight, then settles into its normal hour-long time period Thursday. The analogy comparing “Twin Peaks” to certain other projects is apt, since it has the continuing, multiple-plot format of serials such as “Peyton Place” … but it also has more than a dash of the bizarre, which turned out to be the calling card of the unsettling melodrama “Blue Velvet.”
The latter trait is far from a coincidence, because that critically acclaimed movie was directed by David Lynch, who also is the co-creator and co-executive producer of “Twin Peaks.” Lynch’s main partner in the new venture, Mark Frost, is a graduate of the “Hill Street Blues” production team.
The tone of the show is established at the outset, as the residents of a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest are shaken by the brutal murder of a popular teen-ager, then further stunned by the discovery of another young woman who has survived a horrifying torture.
An FBI agent (played by Kyle MacLachlan, one of “Blue Velvet’s” stars) arrives in Twin Peaks to investigate the cases, joined by the local sheriff (“Rookies” alumnus Michael Ontkean, shown on the cover with co-star Joan Chen) – whose name happens to be Harry S. Truman – in carrying out his assignment. However, the more they probe, the more they find an ever-mounting number of figurative skeletons in the closets of the area populace.
Among other regulars in the large cast are Joan (“The Last Emperor”) Chen, Lara (“The Preppie Murder”) Flynn Boyle, Peggy (“The Mod Squad”) Lipton, Sherilyn (“Two Moon Junction”) Fenn, Everett (“Quest for Fire”) McGill and Ray (“Robocop”) Wise. Two stars of the Oscar-winning 1961 movie musical “West Side Story,” Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn, also have prominent roles.
The style and content of the “Twin Peaks” pilot are so out-of-the-ordinary for network TV, ABC originally considered airing tonight’s premiere without commercial breaks.
The second part of Bobbin’s article is continued on page 187 which contains Lynch speaking about navigating his foray into television and how his work on Blue Velvet perhaps inspired his 1950s-inspired vibe on Twin Peaks.
That plan ultimately would have resulted in too much lost revenue, so the debut will have slightly fewer ads clustered together more tightly, in an effort to sustain the show’s mood as much as possible.
However, viewers shouldn’t expect a quick solution to the slaying that sets the saga in motion, because that plot is expected to unfold over the initial eight episodes of “Twin Peaks.”
Indeed, Lynch deems the show to be “a murder-mystery soap opera with fantastic characters. Everybody loves a mystery, and we’re all detectives of sorts. We want to know what’s going to happen, and I think we’ll like getting to know these characters and spending time with them.”
A decidedly dark approach is evident in “Twin Peaks” from the very first scene, and while Lynch hopes to maintain that, he also maintains that he “wouldn’t want to” clash regularly with the Standards and Practices Department of ABC – also known as the censors – though that division of the network is likely to be quite nervous about some aspects that are very basic to the show.
“Every project that you ever do has boundaries,” Lynch acknowledged, “and you have to work within them. It’s kind of exciting to do that. We’ve gotten ‘notes’ (suggestions from the network) from time to time, then we’ve had to deal with the problems and come up with solutions that they’ll go for.”
While many elements of “Twin Peaks” are quite modern, others seem like throwbacks to the 1940s and 1950s, depicting an all-American way of life that seems stereotypical and outmoded by today’s standards.
“When I was making ‘Blue Velvet’,” Lynch explained. “I went into a small town in North Carolina, and I got a real sense of the past. When you go into many people’s homes, you see furniture from the ’20s or ’30s or whenever, and you see lots of little knick knacks that are from who-knows-when. Those little details sort of add up to a feeling of the past, and a little bit of the mystery genre of the 1950s is in ‘Twin Peaks,’ for sure.”
Some of the show’s stars believe there’s some realism in “Twin Peaks,” too.
Lipton added that she sees the fictional setting as “every town, every city. I think it runs the gamut of people in general. The town that I came from was sort of well-to-do, and it didn’t look like Twin Peaks, and on the outside, no one (acted) like they were from Twin Peaks … but (the very essence of ‘Twin Peaks’ is) all of that. I believe all of that is under the surface everywhere in this country, and that’s why I think everybody can relate to it. I think they will.”
TWIN PEAKS IN “TV WEEK” FOR APRIL 8-14, 1990 | SUNDAY NIGHT PROGRAM GUIDE
On page 137, a Sunday night program guide shows Twin Peaks airing at 9:00 p.m. on ABC. Page 120 (center image) had a snippet about the show in their “Broadcast Movies” listing. Page 139 (right image) contains a mention of the show airing in the 9:00 p.m. spot.
For the pilot, there were 34.6 million viewers in the United States who watched the mystery unfold.
TWIN PEAKS IN “TV WEEK” FOR APRIL 8-14, 1990 | THURSDAY NIGHT PROGRAM GUIDE
The week Twin Peaks first aired was special as there was a second helping of the show on Thursday night, April 12, when episode 1.001 was broadcast. Page 167 contained the program guide for the evening with airing at 9:00 p.m. up against NBC’s extremely popular Cheers.
Page 169 (right image) contained a brief episode synopsis: “Twin Peaks: FBI agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman learn more about Laura Palmer’s life; Catherine reveals her plot to take over Packard sawmill.”
There was clearly more that happened in episode but space was limited. There were 23.2 million U.S. viewers who tuned into the second episode, hoping to find more answers to the mystery of “Who killed Laura Palmer?”
See high-resolution images of this article on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/albums/72177720326076961
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