NYTimes lists six types of shows influenced by Twin Peaks

[froodle]

When ABC started airing “Twin Peaks” in the spring of 1990, television was on the cusp of a slowly unfolding revolution. The proliferation of new cable outlets and the widespread use of VCRs to “time-shift” programs meant TV writers and producers could experiment with different ways of telling stories, knowing that even their freakiest ideas had the potential to find an audience. Over time, the striking imagery, curious tone and narrative playfulness of “Twin Peaks” — so radical when the show debuted — became more common across the dial.

In the decades since, networks and cable channels have continued producing shows directly or indirectly influenced by “Twin Peaks.” Many of those series ran longer than “Twin Peaks” itself, perhaps because they effectively isolated its more mainstream elements and put them at the center. Just by trying out so much that felt new and inspired, the show’s creators, Mark Frost and David Lynch, inadvertently spawned an array of TV subgenres that have been called “Twin Peaks”-esque. Like the following:

Everyone Is Eccentric

A little over a month after “Twin Peaks” aired its Season 1 finale, CBS did a soft summer launch of its new drama “Northern Exposure,” which also took place out in the sticks — Alaska, to be exact — in a community populated by eccentrics with complicated back stories. Though the show wasn’t as dark or kinky, the similarities were so unmistakable that “Northern Exposure” actually parodied the look and tone of “Twin Peaks” in one of its first-season episodes as a way of acknowledging the elephant in the room.

When both shows became hits, the “quaint hamlet as a reflection of America at its weirdest” became even more common as a premise, for shows like “Picket Fences,” “Eerie, Indiana” — even “Gilmore Girls.” None of those series took much from “Twin Peaks” beyond their similar settings (although “Eerie” had a supernatural component, too).