Carnivale offers strange visions in dustbowl America

You could almost smell David Lynch coming off last week's first episode of Carnivale (11.25pm, TV One).

As the signs and the wonders, the freaks, the cripples, the blind and the insane came and went during the first hour of this new HBO drama - while at the same time nothing much happened - you could be excused comparisons with Lynch's eccentric, bizarre TV series (and movie) of the early 90s, Twin Peaks.

Either that or most of Nick Cave's back catalogue.

And it's a comparison that is not necessarily flattering. One of the great criticisms of Twin Peaks was that it was a shaggy dog story of record-setting proportion. It was baffling, if sometimes absorbing, intrigue without a conclusion.

Carnivale, which appears to be similarly allegorical on first viewing, may well prove to suffer from the same infuriating tendencies.

Before the show launched in the United States back in 2003 - why has it taken so long to appear here? - Carnivale's creator and writer Daniel Knauf reportedly said it doesn't tell its story in the entire first season of 12 episodes.

In fact, Knauf, who was apparently unconvincing in his assertion that he knew where his story was going, said it would take at least three seasons, but not more than six, to conclude.

For hardcore fans of Twin Peaks and it's-the-journey-not-the-destination carry-on, this may prove an attraction. But it will take a lot more than last week's muddled shadow play to convince me.

The episode opened in 1934 in the Oklahoma dustbowl. The Depression is in full swing and Ben Hawkins (the very good Nick Stahl, who is probably recognisable to most from the third Terminator film, Rise Of The Machines) is burying his momma as a bulldozer arrives to bowl the house. The bank is calling in its debt.

As a stand-off between the shattered Hawkins and the bulldozer looms, a group of carnival folk are passing and lend the young bloke a hand. With nothing to stay for, Hawkins joins them - a mix of freaks and loons led by dwarf Michael J. Anderson's shrewd, mysterious Samson - as a roustabout and goes on the road.

Hawkins is plagued by dark dreams which seem to involve World War I in a cornfield.

Between these scenes we met Clancy Brown's disturbed preacher Crowe in California. He, too, has strange visions.

The whole thing is strange visions actually, none of which make much sense - at least not yet. But clearly some showdown between good and evil is afoot.

Samson's allusion to the mysterious owner of the carnival - "management" - and Hawkins and Crowe's strange powers and visions clearly hint at it.

The question is how long are you prepared to wait for the showdown to ensue?

But if the yarn is vague if potentially absorbing, the design, like HBO's much better Deadwood, is extraordinary.

The production is bathed in sepia and wind-blown dust and the sense of time and place is strong. Like Deadwood, you can smell the dirt and taste the intrigue.

However, where that show, and HBO's other standout productions Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, are able to tell small, concise and entertaining dramas while still playing out a larger story, Carnivale may well have fallen into the Twin Peaks trap.

Only time will tell whether this carnival was over before it even began.