Are you ready for TWIN PEAKS?

A year ago cover girl Sherilyn Fenn was unknown. Today she´s a star, acclaimed for her 'disturbingly sexy' portrayal of bad little rich girl Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks, the most-talked about show in America. Hailed as a Peyton Place for the 90s, the quirky murder mystery series launched a cult and gripped the nation with a huge cast of characters involved in the biggest cliffhanging plot since JR was shot in Dallas. So just what is it all about? Pearson Phillips explains ...

The mood is set by the opening credits. No glittering skyscrapers or sun-baked paradise, but cold, dreary logging country in America´s Pacific Northwest. Smoke rises straight up from factory chimneys in the frosty morning air. A descending musical throb accompanies a shot of some nerve-jangling machine which sharpens the teeth of a band saw. Welcome to Twin Peaks! Population: one less than it was the evening before, thanks to the body at the lake.

So begins the surreal soap opera which last summer had some 30 million Americans in thrall. Each week Peaks freaks gathered around their sets, munching cherry pie and doughnuts (as consumed by the show´s two lawmen), and tried to work out which of the towns various bizarre inhabitants killed Laura Palmer.

Will Twin Peaks grip British viewers in the same way? We´re about to find out - BBC2 unveils the series here on Tuesday with the 90-minute pilot movie, describe by Time magazine in America as 'like nothing you´ve seen on prime time - or on God´s earth'.

Its creators, cult film director David Lynch and former Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost, prefer to call it a 'Peyton Place for the 90s'. Lynch, who disturbs his audiences with voyages around the seamy side of the mind in such films as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and, Wild at Heart, claims: 'It´s just a regular television show. It´s about secrets.'

A look at an early rough cut of the pilot was enough to convince BBC2 Controller Alan Yentob that British viewers would thrill to Twin Peaks. What struck him was the way Lynch had taken the familiar hour format of a cast of characters in a family or place and given it a twist. 'He´s very good at parodying. He shows a side of American life under the surface, a side rarely shown on American television.'

On the surface, Twin Peaks is a quiet town. But an underbelly of corruption, drugs, illicit sex and downright weirdness is exposed when the naked corpse of 17-year-old, high-school homecoming queen Laura washes ashore in a plastic bag. Before the sheriff, Harry S Truman (Michael Ontkean), begins to investigate, another victim, tortured but still alive, is discovered. Enter the FBI in the form of Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), who uses a pocket tape recorder to dictate his thoughts on everything, from the beauty of the area´s trees to each detected murder clue, to his unseen assistant Diane. He is, among other things, a cherry pie freak - and coined the American catch-phrase of 1990s: 'That´s a damned fine cup of coffee!'

Together Truman and Cooper unwrap the layers of the town before our eyes, scattering clues and red herrings along the way. Laura, they discover, was leading a secret double life and so is almost everyone else in Twin Peaks. There´s trouble over at the saw mill. The waitresses in the Double R Diner are all carrying on with someone they shouldn´t be. The proprietor of the Great Northern Hotel is too ambitious for his own health. There´s a dotty psychiatrist, a wife-beater trucker, a woman sublimating her desires into a search for a silent curtain rail and a woman with a pet log.

What, you wonder, is the meaning of the dwarf who talks backwards? Why is a stag´s head on the table at the bank?

Pervading it is all the Romeo and Juliet aroma of adolescent sex and power. The adult have forfeited control and the youngsters have broken loose.

Who killed Laura Palmer? Perhaps everyone ...