Simon's Revision Tips: Twin Peaks

Feeling down at the prospect of hours in front of a desk revising your way to certain doom? Simon Fearn has some advice.

Yesterday, I faced the depressing task of constructing a revision timetable, consigning myself to endless hours of trying to memorise dates, places and philosophers. Looking at the stoic columns of revision slots stretching out to envelop the forthcoming days, I felt despair creeping up on me. The only solution was to take the advice a slightly odd FBI agent gave me a few days previous. "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.". So I followed Agent Cooper's advice, and scheduled a Twin Peaks break every day at 1:30pm, to be enjoyed with a slice of killer cherry pie.

You may be wondering what Twin Peaks is, and why I am prescribing it as the cure to your revision woes. And this surprisingly takes me to Bastille's debut album: Bad Blood. Slated as a rip-off of the synth pop that apparently only the now extinct La Roux is allowed to play, Dan Smith released an odd fusion of addictive vocals, anthemic choruses and classical references (the opener is called Pompeii). The best song on the album was entitled Laura Palmer. Despite the bland chorus lyrics ("this is your heart, can you feel it?"), it had intriguing references to "all the people of the town, cast their eyes right to the ground, in matters of the heart" and "such terrifying final sights". Who was the mysterious dead girl who went running out into the night, never to be seen again?

The titular characters of this anthemic song next shows up when she washes up as a corpse wrapped in plastic in 1990's Twin Peaks. Deep fault lines are revealed within an enclosed community, and practically everyone seems to be conspiring against everyone else. Then Agent Dale Cooper arrives on the scene, and things start to get really confusing. Dark figures haunt the dreams of the townsfolk, especially a terrifying vision of an animalistic man with long unruly hair. Then Agent Cooper starts basing his investigation on the testimony of an ethereal midget, who also feels the need to tell Cooper that "his favourite gum is coming back into fashion". This leads him to the seedy One Eyed Jack's Casino, owned by the insidious Ben Horne, where all manner of nasty things take place.

Essentially Twin Peaks is all about pairings and oppositions, togetherness and duality. The first series has so many couples conducting secret affairs that we're almost in soap opera territory, but these clandestine doings are conducting in quirky ways with the ominous threat of violence. Meanwhile, there seems to be inner conflicts within all of the characters. Bobby Briggs is one of the most complex characters on television: utterly wild, capable of acts of great love and great callousness, both altruistic towards his paramour Shelly Johnson and inherently selfish, determined to break away from his conservative military father, but then breaking down whenever someone breaks his fragile outer shell. Josie Packard is a similar case, throughout her time in the first series it seems like everyone is willing her downfall and she's the innocent victim, but then the tables are turned when it transpires that she is involved in some exceptionally dirty deeds.

The reason I recommend Twin Peaks to provide a break from the Sisyphean nature of revision is that there's so much going on in it that you can't help put be pulled in to the mysterious ways of the titular isolated American settlement. Plus, Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer are two of the most developed characters I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Kyle MacLachlan can take much of the credit for the success of Special Agent Dale Cooper, who's idiosyncratic portrayal holds the whole thing together. Meanwhile, the uniting strand tying all the disparate threads into one cohesive plot is Laura Palmer. Despite being dead from the start (unless you believe she's somehow being reincarnated as her cousin Maddy, played by the same actress), her presence haunts proceedings, with each episode ending with the credits rolling in front of her photograph, she even has her own theme tune. A little like our introduction to Jay Gatsby through rumour, the only information we get about Laura Palmer is from the testimony of her friends, who constantly produce more extreme accounts of her wayward and confused personality.To complement these meaty characters, we have oddballs such as the Log Lady and the comically tragic Leeland Palmer.

The most delightful thing is that the second series just gets weirder and weirder. Cooper now has nightly visits from a Big Friendly Giant and Leeland's hair mysteriously turns white overnight. We gaily throw ourselves into the abyss of utter farce, which is strangely coupled by a darker tone as Laura's killer begins to make himself known. All this is ideal as light relief from revision. So treat yourself. Join Cooper and co. in David Lynch's postmodern comedy nightmare.