by GLENN ESTERLY

With Twin Peaks, filmmaker David Lynch brings his unique vision to television

When ABC started talking about running the two-hour pilot of Twin Peaks without commercials as a way of demonstrating commitment to the artistry of the new series (beginning April 8 on ABC and Global), David Lynch was surprisingly cool on the idea. "I´d be kind of disappointed if there weren´t any commercials," he said. "We designed it painstakingly to have commercials - little mini-movies in between the selling. It was a big challenge that got to be kind of thrilling."

Speaking of thrills, Twin Peaks is "a murder mystery/soap opera," says Lynch, who´s best known for directing "Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man" and "Eraserhead". His new series has already been dubbed '"Blue Velvet' meets Peyton Place." Quips aside, it´s at the very least a major television experiment by the acclaimed Lynch and his partner, Mark Frost, who was a writer and story editor for Hill Street Blues; the two co-wrote all eight episodes.

Twin Peaks. If it were an actual small town five miles south of the Canadian border - sort of a kinky Lake Wobegon set in the Pacific Northwest - you´d want to slow down and proceed with caution while driving through, lest one of Sheriff Harry S. Truman´s (Michael Ontkean) eager deputies nab you for speeding. And having slowed down, you might as well stop at the cosy Double R Diner run by Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton). After polishing off some cherry pie, you could drive around and chat with the friendly natives about the scenery - mountains, a lake, waterfalls, Douglas firs. And by then you might as well spend the night at the Great Northern Hotel, where you might bump into one of the other guests: FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).

FBI? Now, why would an FBI agent be camped in sleepy, no-news Twin Peaks? Well, once in a while, a whole town has a bad day - a really, really bad day - and Twin Peaks has just had a doozy. First, the high school homecoming queen washed up on the beach in a plastic bag. Another girl was viciously tortured. And the suspicion is that somebody right there in Twin Peaks - somebody everyone in town knows - is the murderer.

Layers of intrigue - virtually no one in this town is quite what he or she appears to be on the surface - envelop the series, which scatters clues, sardonic humor and unexpected romantic liaisons throughout a basic detective story.

The unlikely emergence of David Lynch in prime time started, he says, when the talent agent he and Frost share insisted that they "cook something up for television."

Lynch had misgivings: "It had always seemed absurd to me to stop some piece of work in the middle to sell a product, but I got used to it." For a filmmaker whose movies have been labeled "a dark lense on America," Lynch´s outlook on the series experience is consistently sunny - even on the subject of network censors.

"Standards and Practices sent us notes from time to time. Every project you do has boundaries, and you have to work within them, deal with these problems and come up with imaginative solutions. That´s fun to do as well." Or, as Lynch is often inclined to say, "That´s cool."

The same might be said of the cast of Twin Peaks, a combination of actors Lynch has employed before, plus former TV stars and Academy Award nominees. Lynch hired Kyle MacLachlan, his lead actor in "Dune" and "Blue Velvet," the idiosyncratic FBI agent. "I wonder why he keeps choosing me," says MacLachlan. "I think David thinks of me as sort of an Everyman, so he can plug me into whatever situation he writes." Cooper is a quirky but insightful investigator who compulsively relates most of his thoughts into a tape recorder. "I wish I´d known Kyle as well when we did 'Dune'," Lynch says. "I could have written more for him. He´s got a gleam in his eye and a great sense of humor. His personality is very important to develop the personality of the character. I think it´s important to work with someone over a period of time, because you get to know things that really help you in future roles."

And another thing: Lynch believes there´s a fair amount of detective in everyone - a basic urge to get to the bottom of things, which in his own case is multiplied several times. Cooper, in fact, might very well be Lynch´s alter ego. In terms of writing and directing the character, "I´m right with Cooper. I really like him."

Sheriff Truman - "It´s a good American name," says Lynch, straight-faced - is the solid sort. He´s played by Michael Ontkean, a Montreal native who broke through with The Rookies and used his hockey talents in "Slap Shot" with Paul Newman. Ontkean thinks of Truman as "a bridge between some of the weirder characters and the audience. His reactions to people and events are in a vein that you can identify with. He´s more grounded and dependable, but if the series gets picked up Harry will probably display more sides. There´s a secret society in town, for instance, that he´s instrumental in."

The sheriff´s love interest is Josie Packard, played by Oscar nominee Joan Chen ("The Last Emperor"). As the owner of the sawmill, Packard is the widowed sister-in-law, Packard of Catherine Martell, played by the triple Oscar nominee Piper Laurie ("The Hustler"). "Catherine," says Laurie, "is constantly at odds with Josie Packard and is not above using any trick to consolidate her late brother´s dreams as the lumber baron of Twin Peaks."

Former Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton heard of Lynch´s project and nervously went in to read for the role of diner owner Norma Jennings. "I was so impressed with David´s work that I tried to control my excitement," she says. "I did - to the extent that I blanked out even having read for him. I remembered talking, but not reading. But he was very kind and made me feel very comfortable. If he likes you, he wants you for the job. That´s it."

Elsewhere in the casting process, Lynch and Frost reunited Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn, who were in the film version of "West Side Story." Here Beymer plays Benjamin Horne, the business king-pin of Twin Peaks, and Russ Tamblyn (another Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor in, appropriately, the movie "Peyton Place") is the town shrink, whose behavior raises questions about his own mental health. On the younger side, James Marshall is a high school senior with James Dean overtones; Dana Ashbrook plays Bobby Briggs, the rebellious son of a military family; Sherilyn Fenn (who also stars in Lynch´s next movie, "Wild at Heart") plays Benjamin Horne´s scheming daughter; and Lara Flynn Boyle (who played Robert Urich´s daughter in Amerika) is the murdered prom queen´s friend.

Fourteen months ago, the cast assembled near Seattle to film the two-hour pilot. There, with the wind stirring ominously through the Douglas firs, a prime-time TV soap for the ´90s took shape. Lynch says that he uses the script as a guide - and not the final word: "It´s vital that when you get on or set or location, you let the ideas jump things up to another level." Due in part to the openness to change, actors love Lynch. Even though in Twin Peaks most are just a small cog in the overall picture, they tend to be uncommonly grateful. "David has so much ... gentleness," Piper Laurie says, "which may be a surprising word to use for some of what comes out of his head, creatively. But on the set he creates an atmosphere in which he and everyone can work freely. There´s none of the hamfisted ways that get embarrassing."

As Peggy Lipton remembers," There was a scene with some spilt milk. He likes details in his work, so he was sculpting this milk like an artist, which he is, a painter. On the other hand, he has this quality of taking things in as a director and letting them go so easily that he doesn´t get stuck. There´s a lightness about him as a person that people who associate him with 'Blue Velvet' and 'Eraserhead' probably, legitimately, would have a hard time believing."

Surely, Lynch´s cult reputation - for the erotic detective story "Blue Velvet" (in which Dennis Hopper´s maniacal character requires an oxygen mask to reach orgasm) and for "Eraserhead" (in which a mutant baby howls ceaselessly) - must have given ABC executives pause, but everyone involved maintains that the basic policy has been hands off. And while the style is distinctive, Mark Frost insists the show "isn´t a radical departure, We´ve just tried to come at the prime-time soap genre in a fresh way, as Hill Street did with cop shows at the start of the ´80s."

Lynch, a Missoula, Mont., native, is familiar with small communities of the Northwest; his family lived for a time in Spokane, Wash. He went on to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to study painting and sculpture; a benefactor then funded a short experimental film that led to a grant from the American Film Institute. He went on to direct "Eraserhead," and that job, bizarrely, caused Mel Brooks, who was starting a film company, to think Lynch was just the right guy to direct the very serious "Elephant Man" - which Lynch did. He moved on to direct "Dune," an expensive box office bomb, and finally hit critically and commercially with "Blue Velvet." (Twice divorced, Lynch also met his current romantic interest, Isabella Rossellini - who played the tortured Dorothy Vallens - on that set.) Lynch´s upcoming movie, "Wild at Heart," stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as young lovers on the lam from sinister forces.

Asked whether descriptions of his being a touch bent are accurate, Lynch says, "That´s fair enough, I guess." Of the "dark lens on America" theme that´s been used to describe his movie work, he says, "I guess it´s kind of powerful - the negative, darker side of things is more exciting or intriguing than the lighter side - so I can see where journalists concentrate on that. But I like to try to have a balance in a piece. I really like to get down in there and get both sides, so that you can feel both, the good and the bad." Which takes us back to Twin Peaks: "I don´t quite know how it happened, but the characters turned out to be people we all know instantly. They´re all very human. And, certainly, they are slightly bent."

That´s cool.