Is “Twin Peaks” the most American TV series ever made? It is, maybe, not the first series that a nation would happily choose as its calling card: a murder mystery, surreal and haunted, that involves the sacrifice of the innocent against a backdrop of mountain majesties and small-town diners.

Then David Lynch dropped a movie-length pilot for a show that would become a beacon of artistic audacity for TV creators in the boom years to come. Among them: David Chase, whose brainchild “The Sopranos” would follow in 1999.