As a tribute to the late David Lynch, we shall be screening the legendary eighth episode of the third season of his and Mark Frost's television series Twin Peaks, first aired on June 25, 2017.

Before the first season of Twin Peaks was broadcast in 1990, Lynch had achieved a certain amount of success as a director of films such as the cult arthouse hit Eraserhead, the mainstream but deeply affecting period drama The Elephant Man, Dune (a big-budget flop, though still preferred by some to Denis Villeneuve's recent multi-part blockbuster adaptation of Frank Herbert's novels) and Blue Velvet, controversial in some quarters for its unflinching depiction of violence against women and Dennis Hopper's unhinged performance as one of the 1980s' most terrifying villains. But it was obvious these films were the product of a unique sensibility, and their director attracted a devoted - yet still fairly niche - following. 

Twin Peaks, which Lynch co-created with Frost, was first broadcast to huge acclaim in April 1990. This reception, together with Wild at Heart winning the Palme d'Or the following month at the Cannes Film Festival, turned Lynch into a household name. Television audiences responded with enthusiasm to the fictional small town in Washington state, populated by quirky characters whose zany soap opera antics were structured around a murder mystery - "Who killed Laura Palmer?" - that only barely concealed recurrent darker themes of abuse and drug addiction.

Lynch and Frost exercised less contol over the second season. The show's quality fell off, and Lynch received considerable backlash to his feature film spin-off, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), in which the TV show's darker themes were foregrounded. It was more disturbing than the TV show, and poorly received by mainstream critics and many of the show's fans. It duly bombed at the box-office, though has since been recognised as one of the best horror films of that decade.

The TV show was unexpectedly revived in 2017 for a third season, Twin Peaks: The Return, set 25 years after the cliffhanger ending of the second season. The investigation into Laura Palmer's murder is reopened, FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is trapped in the sinister Black Lodge, and the evil spirit known as "Bob" is still at large. The Return amps up the transgressive, surreal and quasi-experimental side of the first season, but it isn't until Part 8, also known as Gotta Light?, that it shucks off the normal boundaries of orthodox television plotting to plunge the viewer into a maelstrom of doppelgängers, floating orbs, the first atomic explosion - and the root of all evil.