{alltv} 'Haven' no 'X-Files' rip off

Haven's Lucas Bryant and Emily Rose are setting themselves up to be the new Mulder and Scully. With the sexes reversed, of course.

"Yeah, and I really fought to get Gillian Anderson's hairstyle and colour, but no luck yet," Bryant said.

Referring specifically to Anderson's Scully and David Duchovny's Mulder on The X-Files, Bryant added, "They're great. I mean, they're like a beautiful classic couple. And I think we're probably the next beautiful classic couple."

Hey, no pressure.

Technically speaking, the shot-near-Halifax Haven -- which makes its Canadian debut Monday, July 12 on Showcase, three days after its U.S. debut on the cable network Syfy -- is not a descendant of The X-Files. Rather, it's a supernatural drama based on a Stephen King novel called The Colorado Kid.

When FBI agent Audrey Parker (Rose) arrives in the small town of Haven, Maine to investigate a routine case, she quickly gets caught up in a world where people with bizarre and often dangerous abilities seemingly are the norm.

One such afflicted individual is local police detective Nathan Wuornos (Bryant), who nonetheless initially resists the suggestion that something wider is occurring here.

That's why, you see, Nathan reminds us of the skeptic Scully, while Audrey is more like the open-minded Mulder.

"Nathan has a condition where he can't feel pain, so this has sort of alienated him from people and relationships recently," Bryant said. "So I think it's intimacy that will sort of get in his way (through the 13 episodes of Haven).

"But at the same time, when Audrey blows into town she kind of blows his world open. Don't laugh, it's true."

Hey, who's laughin'?

Canadian TV viewers may recognize the Canadian Bryant for his role on the short-lived CBC series MVP. But even as a Canadian, Bryant admitted he wasn't quite prepared for rural Nova Scotia.

"I guess the first shock was that we were here on the edge of the earth," Bryant said. "You know, we're shooting in a little town outside of Halifax, looking off into the great wide rest of the world. I thought we were shooting in Halifax initially, and I learned we were not quite in civilization.

"But it's exactly where we wanted to be for this. I don't know if you've travelled the south shore of Nova Scotia, but it's stunning. It's a landscape you don't often see on television."

The Maritimes do present logistical issues, though.

"One of the immediate challenges is the weather," Bryant said. "The pilot (first episode) also deals with weather.

"We started shooting in April. In the scene in the pilot where Emily and I first meet each other, we were outside, it started off on a beautiful day. Then it was black clouds and then it was pouring rain. Then we had hail and two rainbows by the end of the day. And it was all in the same scene.

"We just quickly got used to that being the status quo."

Well, Scully was a pretty tough cookie, as we recall.

Man up, Lucas Bryant, man up.