Haven Season 5 - Volume 1   Starring: Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant and Eric Balfour Distributor: Entertainment One RRP: £29.99 EO10822D Certificate: 15 Release Date: 12 October 2015

The American/Canadian show, Haven turned out to be a slow burner starting slow but building into a show worth watching. Based on Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid, It seemed to start off as your usual weekly solve the supernatural story. The show follows the recently arrived Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), an FBI agent who is investigating ‘the troubles’ a series of negative and inexplicable events. Following the pilot story Audrey remains in the town.

Haven: Season Five - Volume 1 (2014. 13 Eps) is the penultimate part of the show. Over the preceding four seasons the show had grown adding to its own mythos, with additions from horror to science fiction.

The decision was made to cancel the show at the end of its fifth season far enough ahead that the producers have used the time to bring the story arcs to a suitable and satisfying conclusion. Although the last season consists of twenty-six episodes this has been split into two lots of thirteen, hence this four disc DVD set only contains the first half of the last season.

When we last saw our heroes, at the close of season four, Audrey had been taken over by the seemingly evil Mara. There are a number of major story arcs which play across these thirteen episodes. Obviously, the show has to resolve the problem with Audrey being trapped inside Mara and much of the show concentrates on this. Nathan (Lucas Bryant) leads the fight to find and rescue Audrey.

Meanwhile Duke (Eric Balfour), containing as he does numerous other people’s troubles, is under the threat that they will emerge out of him in a single explosion, creating the biggest threat to Haven. There are still new troubles to be handled and oddly enough the first part of this season even introduces some new characters, including Dr Charlotte Cross (Laura Mennell), possibly this will play out in the latter part of the season.

The discs have options for either DD 5.1 or DD 2.0 audio tracks, with options for English subtitles. Fans of the show are going to be delighted to discover that every one of the thirteen episodes has a full length audio commentary with the cast and/or crew taking part, pretty impressive for a TV show.

Disc three has a trio of featurettes. Inside Haven (13 x 4 min) has small pieces with cast and crew one for each of the episodes. Haven Origin: Witches are Born (7 min, 11 sec) is a mini episode set in 1698, at the beginning of the troubles and Haven Origins: Native Break Free (6 min 50 sec) is another mini episode, this time set in 1812, concerning an native American, who is cursed by the troubles.

The show very much reminded me of Fringe, both started out looking like pretty ordinary strange event of the week fodder, only to subvert this to create a memorable and wholly original show.

9

Charles Packer