At first glance, the new M. Night Shyamalan television drama Wayward Pines puts one in the mind of Twin Peaks. Both are, after all, set in a small towns which seem ordinary but mask a subcutaneous horror. In truth, the series more resembles Shyamalan's own cinematic style, from films such as Signs and The Village, using the very ordinary as a cradle for disturbing themes and characters.
And the Twin Peaks "thing" doesn't sit well with actor Matt Dillon either. Easing into a chair in the French seaside town of Cannes where he has come to promote the series to program buyers, Dillon mulls over the comparison. "David Lynch is David Lynch and Twin Peaks is great but this is its own show," Dillon says. "I know there's a lot of comparison and I think it's because of [Blake Crouch]." Crouch has acknowledged his book, Pines, was inspired by Twin Peaks.
The series stars Dillon as secret service agent Ethan Burke, who finds himself in a small town from which escape seems impossible. As he continues to spend time there, he begins to suspect that there is more to the town than meets the eye. The series co-stars Carla Gugino as Kate Hewson, a missing agent who surfaces in the town, and Toby Jones as the local hospital psychiatrist, Dr Jenkins. "He has post-traumatic stress related to his work," Dillon says. "He's sent on this mission, to investigate the disappearance of two of his colleagues."
The role is something of a departure for Dillon, whose career has primarily focused on film features. "In theory, there is something great about doing a character over a long stretch of time because you can really – it can get very deep," he says. "You can get a very deep relationship with that character."
He is reticent to say whether he wants to stay long term, in part because the show's early narrative contains a paradigm-shifting twist.
"There are certain things about this that can make it infinite," Dillon says, cryptically. "You can tell a story a lot of different ways but it didn't feel like it was set up to be ... an ongoing TV series. I knew that this would be something different ... when I read the script I was interested. I read the second one and I liked that too and it felt to me like when I would crack open a good book. I could feel it so I was curious about it and then I had a good conversation with Night. He assured me that it was really going to be a very cinematic kind of experience, that it really was going to be a very director-oriented."
Shyamalan acknowledges the series aspires to blend the small and big screens. "To blur the aesthetics of cinema and TV so that you could flip it on and you're watching a movie," he says. "And, you know, the drama-centred filmmakers have great opportunities in television right now and much less opportunities in film right now. That is a fact."
Wayward Pines, FX, Thursday May 14, 8.30pm
