And the finished product, unveiled at a press event in Los Angeles, looks more like Fargo or Twin Peaks.

The new series, from the US studio Warner Bros, will upend the white picket-fenced town of Riverdale, and its popular high-schoolers Archie, Jughead, Reggie, Betty and Veronica.

The character, created by Bob Montana and first seen in Pep Comics #22, published in December, 1941, was originally written as an all-American teenager.

The comic book has been previously adapted for radio, and for a number of animated TV series, notably 1968's The Archie Show, which was a staple of Saturday morning television in the 1970s and 1980s in the US and Australia.

Riverdale, which has been in development for several years, is the first live-action series based on the concept since a one-shot telemovie in 1990, and the first to take on the comic's more recent, darker tone.

But before finalising the tone, the studio suggested to the producers a version in which Archie was a time-traveller and another in which Riverdale was a small town filled with inter-dimensional portals.

In a third iteration, it was suggested that the comedian Louis CK play a grown-up Archie.

All three high-concept proposals were rejected, the show's co-creator, producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa said.

"In the end that was the opposite of what we wanted to do, so all parties backed away," he added.

"[But] that's where the show crystallised ... it went from a coming of age show to a loss of innocence show."

The show will star New Zealand-born actor K.J. Apa as Archie, described in the production notes as "an intense, conflicted teen."

It also stars Luke Perry from Beverly Hills 90210 and Mädchen Amick from Twin Peaks; in a curious footnote, both shows were cited by the producers as touchstones during the development of the series.

It also stars Molly Ringwald, as Archie's mother, Mary Andrews.

One of the show's co-producers Greg Berlanti also revealed the series would fold in other characters from the Archie "universe", including Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.

Both of those spin-off titles are mostly remembered as television cartoons from the early 1970s; Sabrina was also developed into a live-action comedy in the 1990s.

The series is being launched to co-incide with the 75th anniversary of the Archie comic.

It also follows a shift in the last decade in which the printed edition took on a much darker tone.

"We can kind of go anywhere right now," Archie Comics CEO Jon Coldwater said.

"We've known over the last few years the walls have broken down in the world of Archie [but] the integrity of each of the characters has been brilliantly maintained."

Coldwater added the so-called "backlash" against the shift in tone was mostly positive.

Aguirre-Sacasa said the series was initially developed as a "slice of life, coming of age" movie, but that foundered because it was not a big enough film for most studios.

The series was then re-tooled for television and came under the watch of producer Sarah Schechter who, with producer Greg Berlanti, oversees a suite of Warner-owned comic book TV series, notably Arrow, The Flash and Supergirl.

Schechter said the series would explore the theme of loss.

"Being a teenager is the loss of your childhood," she said; she aso acknowledged the series had echoes of Fargo and Twin Peaks.

"[Fans of those shows] are entirely welcome to join us," she said.