To whom it may concern

Riverdale is just boring Eerie, Indiana.

— Godzilla Stan (dubbed) (@EricMelting) June 16, 2019

reading reviews @ 90s tv and does this not just sound exactly like what riverdale is goin for? i'll stand by the fact that the writers know exactly what they're doing (i.e. they really are making a show that would fit right in @ 90s twin peaks daze) pic.twitter.com/hNjUHsN1wa

— ☆ kari (@karasthrace) January 24, 2019

twin peaks, northern exposure, wild palms, american gothic, eerie indiana, even the sopranos falls under weird + dreamy. buffy also leaned heavily into campy, not always easy to follow + full of pop culture territory.

— ☆ kari (@karasthrace) January 25, 2019

I think the Riverdale people could do an amazing reboot of Eerie Indiana.

— I Don’t Get It (@ChairsToLife) October 22, 2018

Tim Hunter very graciously allowed me to interview him to tie in the UK release of his new feature Looking Glass which is his first feature in a decade. It’s a psycho-sexual desert noir starring Nicolas Cage and Robin Tunney. I’ve sat through more of the recent Nicolas Cage films that I care to admit so I can say it’s without a shadow of a doubt Looking Glass is one of the better ones. The film plays like a mishmash of Rear Window and my favourite Nicolas Cage film Red Rock West. Tim has also written or directed such cult-classics such as River’s Edge, Over The Edge, Tex and has worked extensively in TV alongside his feature work on shows like Twin Peaks, Riverdale, Breaking Bad and Eerie Indiana.

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What attracts you to making so many films and TV shows that deal with the seedier side of small-town life?

I think it’s a coincidence. Producers get a sense of what you’ve done and what you can do and they tend to typecast you a little bit. I have an option on a novel by a woman named Yannick Murphy called This is the Water. It’s also set in a small New England town, about a group of swim team moms seeing their girls through a season of competitions, who don’t know a lurking killer is moving in. That is a dark side of a small town story also, so I guess you’re right, I don’t know. I do know that when the producers gave me the script to River’s Edge, my initial worry when I read it wasn’t it was a small town script, but it’s another teen script, because I had done a bunch of stuff with Over The Edge and Tex, and even that Horse picture I did, Sylvester. I didn’t really want to do another teen picture, but then I read that Neal Jimenez script and just called the producers Sarah Pillsbury and Midge Sanford and said I had to do it.

What can you tell me about your experience of working on Eerie Indiana?

Joe Dante brought me into it, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. I did a couple of episodes, including the Tobey Maguire episode—Tobey remembers it and so do I. The other episode, I can’t tell you what it’s about, I can’t remember. It was very fast, very cheap and kind of fun, and just another freelance stop. I do get more residuals for it, bigger than almost anything else I’ve done except for Twin Peaks, which takes the cake for replays. I get checks for 3 cents for Eerie Indiana, but there are a lot of checks for 3 cents!

Do you consider Eerie Indiana to be Stranger Things O.G.?

I’ve only seen the first few episodes of Stranger Things so I can’t answer that question

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From surreal murder mysteries and quirky small-town sitcoms to 'The X-Files' – these series owe David Lynch's cult show a serious debt

When Twin Peaks signed off on June 10th, 1991, it left behind a lot of unanswered questions, a legion of devoted fans – and a serious impact on the medium. Ever since then, showrunners and writing rooms have looked to David Lynch and Mark Frost's "Peyton Place on acid" series for examples on how to push the boundaries of small-screen serial storytelling. It's cast a long, long shadow, and you could argue that almost every other TV show that's hit the airwaves since then – especially in the premium-cable "Prestige" age – has been influenced by the groundbreaking show. We're not living in the Peak TV era so much as the Peaks TV era.

There have been a handful of mysteries, melodramas and quirky comedies, however, that owe a bigger or more obvious debt to this story of secret lives and curdled small-town Americana than most. We've singled out 20 TV shows – some old, some new, some niche, some network hits – that have borrowed elements of Twin Peaks and run with them. It may be the "Dead Girl" catalyst that's turned into a television trope, or it might be the oddball denizens that populate an out-of-the-way woodsy burg. It could even just be a weird-as-hell vibe that a series shares with Lynch and Frost's lysergic primetime soap. But all of these well-known series have certainly built off the weird, the wonderful and often WTF Peaks foundation.

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Great, now I'm sad all over again that Carnivale got cancelled.

I have never read or cared about the Archie comics, but I may watch Riverdale due to all the Twin Peaks comparison

SDCC reviews it here

And an interview with Luke Perry about his role in it