With Syfy’s series Haven set to kick off its second season on Friday I’ve been making my way through the show’s first season over the past few days. Based on Steven King’s novel The Colorado Kid the series chronicles the strange happenings in the town of Haven, Maine. The principle characters are Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), an FBI agent, Nathan Wuomos (Lucas Bryant), a police officer and Duke Crocker (Eric Balfour), the local bad boy with a heart of gold. Entertainment Weekly called it “Twin Peaks meets The X-Files” but that’s a bit misleading because the tone is completely different from David Lynch’s series and the relationship between Mulder and Scully is centered on a believer/skeptic dynamic that is completely absent in Haven. No, Haven is too goofy and too simplistic to be confused with Twin Peaks or The X-Files, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a bit of fun wrapped around a mystery.
To enjoy Haven you have to accept that the small town has an inexhaustible supply of supernatural occurrences that kills off the equally inexhaustible population of this seemingly normal seaside town. These deaths are often shrugged off as minor happenings even when they happen to people close to the principle cast. Most of the characters are also keeping secrets and sometimes when these secrets are told they don’t make a lot of sense. It’s almost as if the writers didn’t quite know what they wanted to do with the series until they were halfway through filming it. The series also has a habit of introducing supporting characters that are built up as important but disappear after one or two episodes. If you can get beyond all of that you’ll probably find Haven among your guilty pleasures. I’m guessing that the second season will actually be stronger than the first but time will only tell.