There are several reasons as to why Twin Peaks met its downfall.
RELATED: Twin Peaks: A Guide to Untangling the Characters of the Knotty Series The episode would mark the last highpoint, with 17.2 million viewers. After that, the ratings took a hard fall, bottoming out at 7.4 million viewers for the third-to-last episode. Lynch directed the episode before departing the show. ABC pushed for a conclusion of the Laura Palmer murder mystery that had been the main storyline since the pilot, while Lynch and Mark Frost, the other co-creator, had intended to leave the mystery unresolved. Renewing the show for another season was a no-brainer.īut the honeymoon soon ended.
Yet, ratings were still great with the season finale drawing a 12.6 rating (18.7 million viewers). ABC has put the show at risk," one executive said. If ABC had put it on Wednesday night it could have built on its initial success. "The show is being banged around on Thursday night. While executives lamented the drop in ratings, producers questioned the timeslot, going head-to-head with another hit show: Cheers. Nonetheless, frustration began to build among executives and producers, although for different reasons. RELATED: Twin Peaks: Off-Kilter David Lynch Movies Fans of the Show Will LoveĪlthough the show lost viewers over the course of the season, it was still considered a hit. Its first regular one-hour episode gained ABC’s highest rating in its timeslot in four years with a 16.2 rating (23.2 million viewers).
It was the most successful episode of a TV show during the 1989-1990 season. The two-hour pilot gained a 22-point rating (which translates to about 34.6 million viewers). It is fair to say that very few, if anybody, would ever receive the opportunity that David Lynch got with Twin Peaks, a show that defied definition and where effect was paramount to story. It was a critical and commercial success at first, but a mix of bad luck, poor decisions by network executives and a questionable creative direction led to plummeting ratings and, eventually, cancelation. It combined various genres, from science fiction to horror to whodunit to soap opera, creating a television smorgasbord. It also made the list on TIME’s 100 Best TV Shows of all time in 2007. It ranked at number seventeen in Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Best Television shows of all time in 2016. ♦ Something like Twin Peaks: The Return we deemed a miniseries sequel and not a proper Season 3, so that cult classic qualified.Twin Peaksis widely considered one of the best and most influential television shows ever produced. ♦ We did not include UK series, so the likes of The End of the F***ing World, Fleabag and Fawlty Towers were not eligible. ♦ The TVLine staff’s personal picks for the best two-season shows ever! In fact, this ranking contains some of our favorite shows of all time. Which two-season shows are our favorites? TVLine presents this updated list of what in our collective opinion are the Top 30 two-and-dones that ever aired. (HBO followed with five total entries.)Īs a result, the two-season show is a strange bird indeed, with many fondly remembered cult favorites landing among its ranks. You’d think if a network went to the trouble of renewing a show, they’d stick with it for a while, right? That, however, is not always the case - especially if you’re ABC, which was home to nine of our Top 30. Why this list, in addition to our ranking of One-Season Wonders? Because frankly it is rare for a series to get renewed for a second season and then be cancelled before reaching Season 3. With the announcement of its revival for a third season, Party Down may eventually lose its vaunted place on TVLine’s Best Two-Season Shows ranking, which has been freshly updated and revisited since its original publication.