There’s a whole lot of new faces in Bristol Cove, between strange goings on in the ocean, the return of Maddie’s mother and a new acquaintance for Xander who seems a little too good to be true. Can Maddie and Ben reconcile their differences enough to help out Ryn, and is there perhaps a more sinister side to the Siren Song?

I was a big fan of the first series of Siren, taking as it did what could have been a schlocky, overly kooky premise and turning into one of the better genre shows of 2018 with smart scripting and decent performances. This season 2 opener… doesn’t quite match up to how I remember but then it is setting up a whole lot of brand new stuff.

Ben is trying his best to move past the Siren Song’s lingering effects, which for him involves some fairly cliched macho solo activities which lead to all sorts of completely predictable scrapes and then a frankly dull interrogation from the local doctor which takes a bizarre turn very quickly.

Meanwhile Maddie has the arrival in town of her mother with which to contend. Turns out (maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention last time) that her mother is (or was) some sort of drug user, which seems to have caused the family a lot of pain. Maddie’s father is very happy to welcome back the apparently reformed character into their lives, but Maddie herself remains a little suspicious.

Perhaps Dale just needs something to believe in though, as he’s getting grief from the town council for not providing them with satisfactory answers for the mysterious goings on of last series. His letting a murder suspect free and failure to provide much explanation for the shooting incident involving Xander haven’t gone down especially well, and he isn’t getting support from the one corner he might have expected it. Is it any wonder that he chooses to believe his wife a reformed character in the circumstances?

Speaking of Xander, he’s having a bit of trouble with his conscience over the death of Donna. Ryn’s response to him is possibly the most profound thing in the episode, and in all honesty I’m setting that bar low, like motivational poster with a plucky-looking kitten and a glib catchphrase on it low. It’s not helped that Xander’s supposedly deep brooding moves onto chatting to Maddie as if he isn’t really over her (in an echo of the end of last season) and then gets his attention distracted again by a new arrival in town who is so obvious they may as well be wearing a T Shirt that says I AM NOT WHO I CLAIM TO BE on it in neon letters.

The main concern though are arrivals of a more esoteric kind in town, and what exactly to do with them while our heroes figure out why they’re here and what can be done. On the surface it seems like there’s an unrelated cause and this may all be one giant happenstance, but given the way in which everything else seems determined to slot together in some conspiratorial jigsaw I doubt that it’ll be that straightforward.

Oh and there’s a little morsel in there about Decker, what might actually have killed him and a hint towards the exact biological effects that the Siren Song may be having on the human brain. Whether that will get explored properly remains to be seen.

Perhaps I’m being unfair – it’s the first episode of a new series and the show seems to be trying to bed in a new plot that both gives us something different but still relates to what we have seen already. My issue at the moment is that none of this has the elegance, the surety or the patience of what we saw last time out. I only hope I’m proved wrong.

Verdict: Not bad, per se, but lacking in much of the flair and intelligence of the first season. I can only hope that it gets better as it goes on. 6/10

Greg D. Smith