Haven Season 1

Pre-Release articles



SyFy Announces an Adaptation of "The Colorado Kid"...Sort Of

*Originally published on 12/1/09


I was emailed a link to a story announcing that the SyFy channel has agreed to produce a 13 episode series called Haven.  It's said to be inspired by King's The Colorado Kid.  The article states that the series is more of a "in the flavor of" presentation, but if the article at Aint it Cool is any indication, the two really have nothing do with one another.

The original story involved an intern at a local newspaper discovering a town's "only unsolved mystery" while Haven involves a group of meta-humans who discover an area that mutes their powers, allowing them to live normal lives.  It seems whatever negates their powers is dissipating and it's up to an FBI agent to solve the mystery.

At face value, it could be an entertaining, sci-fi show.  Who knows, it could even manage to be ground breaking.  People are already throwing out comparisons to shows like The X-Files or Twin Peaks, that's not exactly bad company.  The fact remains though that the two synopses provided for the book and series respectively are nowhere close to one another in terms of character, plot, or even genre.

This just begs the question of why they would bother tying it to King's work.  They could've just as easily said, "hey we have this new series called Haven and we're really excited about it, I think you guys are gonna love it" but they throw out these "inspirations" that make no sense whatsoever.  I know King's a big name and that gives them some "cred", but if you're going to do something completely different, do that and leave well enough alone.  I actually think you'd be better off as no one's comparing it to the work that supposedly inspired it.  That would be like if I wrote a television pilot where a talking moose joined the police force and then said that it was inspired by Ghostbusters.

The network managed to reunite several of the writers from the Dead Zone series that USA aired a couple of years back.  That inspires some confidence because they managed to walk that fine line between doing their own thing while still staying true to the material that inspired it.

I'm not sure what level of influence King will have, if any.  The show might turn out to be pretty good on it's own, I'm just vexed that they went to the trouble of "adapting" a work only to pay no attention to it whatsoever.  We'll see how things pan out though.





Promotional material

More promotional material

Last minute reminder about the series premiere


Season 1

Episode 1: Welcome to Haven

Episode 2: Butterfly

Episode 3: Harmony

Episode 4: Consumed

Episode 5: Ball and Chain

Episode 6: Fur

Episode 7: Sketchy

Episode 8: Ain't No Sunshine

Episode 9: As You Were

Episode 10: The Hand You're Dealt

Episode 11: The Trial of Audrey Parker

Episode 12: Resurfaced

Episode 13: Spiral