After Twin Peaks, David Lynch Tried (And Failed) To Create Sitcom Magic

After “Twin Peaks” upended viewer expectations in the primetime TV landscape, the late, great David Lynch took a shot at doing it again — this time with sitcoms.

Lynch was already talking up his next series in February 1991, while Season 2 of “Twin Peaks” was still airing. “We have a new show, a half hour show called ‘On the Air,'” he told David Letterman, “that we hope will be on the air. I’m shooting a pilot for that soon.”

And so he did: “On the Air” premiered on ABC on June 20, 1992. Like “Twin Peaks,” the series was co-created by Lynch and Mark Frost. Set in the 1950s, it revolved around the fictional ZBC network and its efforts to produce a live variety program called “The Lester Guy Show.” Guy, a down-on-his-luck British movie star, was played by Ian Buchanan, who was best known at the time for his performance as Dick Tremayne on “Twin Peaks.”

In addition to Ian Buchanan, the cast of “On the Air” included a few other alumni of “Twin Peaks.” The late Miguel Ferrer, who played Dale Cooper’s fellow FBI special agent Albert Rosenfield, starred as ZBC president Bud Budwaller; in the show, it’s Budwaller who rediscovers Lester Guy and tries to turn him back into a star. In addition, David L. Lander, who played pine weasel expert Tim Pinkle on “Twin Peaks,” was cast as Valdja Gochktch, director of “The Lester Guy Show” and nephew of the network’s owner. 

Other members of the cast included Nancye Ferguson as Ruth Trueworthy, a production assistant on “The Lester Guy Show”; Marvin Kaplan as Dwight McGonigle, the show’s producer; Kim McGuire as Nicole Thorne, head of comedy at ZBC; and Tracey Walter as Blinky Watts, a technician who’s blessed/cursed with a fictional condition called “Bozeman’s Simplex,” which allows him to see 25.62 times more than the average person. 

Unfortunately, “On the Air” failed to qualify as a ratings smash. In fairness, no one really expected it to be, given its placement on the ABC schedule in late June – but Variety’s review of the series certainly offered a highly prescient opening line: “The seven people who were still watching ‘Twin Peaks’ when its TV run ended won’t be disappointed by the side-splittingly odd premiere of this David Lynch and Mark Frost comedy, though their numbers will dwindle by at least a half-dozen after the dreadful second episode.”

Whether the second episode is truly “dreadful” or not is a matter of opinion, but the suggestion that the show’s numbers would dwindle after its premiere was spot-on: After three episodes (the last of which was aired on July 4, a famously terrible night for TV viewership), ABC took “On the Air” off the air for good. Although the series was released on VHS and laserdisc in Japan, it has been out of print for many years, and it’s not currently available on streaming.