I wanted to watch this after hearing comparisons to last year's campy (yet extremely entertaining) Harper's Island. Apart from beginning with a very gruesome death, the similarities end there. Where Harper's Island took delight in murdering its 30 head-strong cast and whittling it down to a mere handful by the end of its run, Happy Town takes a different route dissecting town-life and its many oddities. Case in point - the murderer is revealed in episode 2. This opening murder opens hundreds of threads and tensions running throughout the town. We have the town sheriff going doolally from chasing a previous psychopath who kidnapped one child each year for half a decade and then vanished along with the six children; the first lady and her dynasty threatening and manipulating townsfolk to try and find a child who went missing; a family of hicks who seem to never cause trouble so much as be in the wrong place at the wrong time; a house full of old ladies who calmly gossip about murder before moving on to the more interesting topic of the mysterious British man living on the second floor. The mythology of the Magic Man, the name of the perpetrator who kidnapped all those children, is slowly revealed throughout the 8 episodes all the while important things such as blackmail, sex, murder, drugs and rebellion occur besides other important things such as pizza dough, famous movie lines and cinnamon. The show has so many of those Twin Peak like moments - strange, totally irrelevant, relevant moments that stick more than the revelations going on around this massive cast of characters. The bizarre gallery of humans assembled in Haplin is quite an exciting array of caricatures, clichés and stereotypes. That is probably the show's biggest problem - too many characters. In the first episode, we're introduced to no less than 15 major characters and a further 5 in the next episode. It leaves you wondering who is doing what, who's actually important and trying to remember names. Sadly, it doesn't work too well. Not only have they got too many main characters but the script suffers from some truly boring dialogue which is a shame when the cast is quite fantastic. A lot of the cast is underused (Rachel Conroy, Amy Acker, has about one line in the first two episode and Peggy Hanlin, Francis Conroy, barely gets to do more than look dotty) so when major events occur, you aren't that invested in the outcome. The clunky manner that the conversations run along that are supposed to further the plot leaves you often confused and bored. One thing the show does well is imagine the town of Haplin. It has its own geography and language and when deputes cover up crimes for their friends or old women prevent young girls leaving town, you can believe that it could happen. Stand-out characters include; "Handsome" Dan, a psychotic cop hell-bent on catching the magic man out; Merrick Grieves, Sam Neill's very stiff Brit; Henley Boone, the new girl in town who is keeping her cards close to her chest. I struggled through the 8 episodes to see if it would ramp up any sort of suspense or display a sense of immediacy like that of Harper's Island but unfortunately, it remained rather one track to the end.
