Wow... I cannot believe how much this TV series stinks. Sure it has some highlights, mainly poking fun at small town America and it's quirks, the occasional piece of slapstick humour, and one FBI agent you just have to wonder if this guy could ever be for real, but all in all, I can see why it failed.
 
Let's start with the opening credits. Every episode in season 1 for 5 minutes before the show starts, the viewer is given a brief overview of the story so far and then must sit through agonisingly slow music covering setting the scene for a country town with picturesque waterfalls, forests, birds everything else to do with the country. Next we have the plot. Now while I don't have anything against long twisted inbred plots and sub plots in stories that build up to a big climax (hey, I'm a huge fan of Neal Stephenson and I love Guy Ritchie's work), this is just freaking ridiculous because it takes too long to get interesting, and then they fell victim to what I dub "Twenty Four Syndrome" when a TV show reaches the climax less than halfway into a season and then it falls into an anti-climatic rebuild to yet another "big thing". So let me give you a one sentence summary so that at least it sounds awesome:
 
(Spoilers and cynicism ahead)...

A teenage girl, is killed by an evil spirit in habiting her father and wrapped up in plastic where she's found by the guy who runs the local sawmill that's going to get burned down by the owner for an insurance scam, who's husband was killed about 18 months ago by a guy who's just been released from prison on parole who's married to the lady who owns the local diner and makes the best pie according to the FBI agent who is sent up to investigate because the dead girl's friend was found wondering over a conveniently placed state line along train tracks making this a federal case and will help out the local authorities by having dreams about giants and midgets taking rings and dancing whilst the dead girl tells him who the killer is but he can't remember the name when he wakes up until he walks the path (a metaphor and a McGuffin to drag the story out) and performs a magic trick in a bar in the middle of a storm and figures it out because a hotel waiter says that the kind of gum he (the perpetrator) likes will come back in style, and just as the FBI agent is about to go home with the case all nice and neatly wrapped up because the father of the deceased girl died in custody when the evil spirit killed him too, so the FBI agent goes on a fishing trip with the bald guy who runs Star Gate SG-1 goes missing and FBI agent is relieved of duty because (and this is where it seems 24-Syndrome strikes as we are only 10 episodes into a 22 episode season!), he apparently smuggled drugs in from Canada when over the US-Canadian border in a whorehouse and casino to rescue the dead girl's schoolfriend, and a transvestite from the DEA played by David Duchovny comes to investiage, all the while the teenagers from the school are up to their Scooby Doo antics trying to solve the crime themselves and getting up to no good by breaking and entering, dealing drugs that came from over the US-Canadian border, trying to kill each other because of the love for each other, or trying to get work in the local cat house until they nearly shag their father and then rescued by the FBI agent and at every scene where the grown ups of the victim is, there is horrible screaming and carrying on about the death of their daughter, and their friends really aren't much better, either sleeping with each other, killing each other, burning down saw mills for insurance money, starting country clubs, counselling children whilst wearing glasses with red and blue lenses on too many drugs, chasing Norwegians out of hotels and then inviting Icelanders in, running diners, or going back to high school thinking they're a teenager again with their superman strength able to leg press 600lbs faster than I'm able to lift a litre of milk. Hope I didn't ruin it for you, rather I hope I saved it from ruining your weekend.