SummaryLife among the living is tough enough, but meet Mitchell, a 120-year-old vampire, George, a highly intelligent werewolf, and Annie an agoraphobic ghost who died under mysterious circumstances, whom all live together with just the slight bit of hope that they can fit into the community and smile at the thought of being human. But they soo...
SummaryLife among the living is tough enough, but meet Mitchell, a 120-year-old vampire, George, a highly intelligent werewolf, and Annie an agoraphobic ghost who died under mysterious circumstances, whom all live together with just the slight bit of hope that they can fit into the community and smile at the thought of being human. But they soo...
Creator Toby Whithouse takes all the themes associated with the cursed and the damned very seriously, and if his exploration of them is less baroque than other franchises, it promises to be even more effective.
All episodes available again on iPlayer currently for those who missed it.
Fantastic series, probably won't be too popular with Poldark fans who tune in for Aidans body.
This deserved a wider audience for writing and special effects.
What happened to the Annie actor afterwards?
Being Human is one of the best series I've been watching ever. The story is set in Bristol, where we find the home of vampire, werewolf and a ghost. The three are trying to be human, to stop being monsters. In their way of becoming humans the characters are developed to something much more than just a ghost, vampire and werewolf. They become persons who you'll like and hate at the same time. They manage to do the most important thing for a story - they make you relate to them. May be the best part about this series is the fact that you can see the personal dilemmas of every single character on screen, even from most of the minor characters. However, there are many funny moments to brake the ice, and believe me, the Brits know how to be fun.
Other significant part, at least for me, is the music in the series. We hear some of the best British acts through the series such as Muse, Arctic Monkeys, The Prodigy, Kasabian, etc.
Whatever deeper meanings one might extrapolate, the show's approach proves refreshingly unpretentious and a great deal of fun, playfully exploring the mythologies surrounding ghosts, vampires and werewolves.
Between "Twilight," HBO's "True Blood" and the WB's upcoming "Vampire Diaries," I'd begun to feel overwhelmed by the undead. Then along came BBC America's Being Human to change my mind.
The series has a darker edge to it than Twilight (or "Vampire Light" as I like to think of it) and the cast (both permanent and supporting) are fabulous and believable in this twist to the usual dysfunctional family unit/group that we usually see on TV. You feel their pain and terror as they come to terms and live with some terrifying secrets.
Not every vampire like has to be thin and pale, and that's what's scary about being human. Just who do you trust when even the police who are "supposed to protect and serve" are themselves Vampires? This isn't friends with fangs, but believable characters that feel real in an unbelievable situation/scenario. Terrific TV
I like the acting and characters, but the creature lore is weak. Whether the vampire can kill whole crowds of people or has to fear individual humans is completely arbitrary. And apparently the worst part about being a ghost is you can't change your clothes, since the ability to touch others is also arbitrary. The ghost's teleportation ability is also laughably underused as it would instantly nullify about half the conflicts. It's a show that wants to make a supernatural character drama, but without doing any homework.
I watched season 1 and part of season 2, and decided that there was no reason to go on anymore. George turned into a jerk (cheating on Nina, for instance), and even before then he was annoying. The writing has been lauded as being "sharp," but I was mostly bored. The vampires lacked menace, and the main vampire baddie of the first season (Eric) looked more like Santa Claus than a bad guy. Vampires are supposed to be tall and thin and beautiful, people. I realized that less happens in a 60-minute episode than in a US-length 40-minute one, or even in a 20-minute Disney Channel show. I liked Annie for the most part, and Mitchell was alright in the first season, but the only characters who ever triggered any sort of emotional reaction were the two guest ghosts. I found the characters to be undeveloped and rather flat. The show also lacked a sense of depth and darkness. Heck, even Twilight had more darkness than Being Human!
Being Human (UK) Season 1
Creator: Toby Whithouse
Cast: Lenora Crichlow as Annie the ghost, Russell Tovey as George the werewolf, Aidan Turner as Mitchell the vampire, Jason Watkins as Herrick the vampire and Sinead Keenan as Nina the love interest of George, who later, herself, becomes a werewolf.
Costume design: For the most part the costume design is unremarkable. It doesn't lend itself the genre and if the point is being human, means being boring, mission accomplished.
Set design: the two sets are the interior of an apartment and the interior of a hospital. The apartment, like the costumes are utterly unremarkable. We are to believe that a vampire, 300 years old, works for minimum wage and that's all the money he has in the world. Background music: unremarkable and adds absolutely nothing to the series. There is little to no memorable moments. In the latter part of the series they added contemporary pieces, but it was completely destroyed by the complete lack of imagination on the writer's part by turning the "background" music into a montage. Music montage means -10. One you see a music montage it means the writer gave up.
Plot: The state plot is that a vampire, werewolf, and a ghost live together. They agree to try and be as normal as possible, A.K.A. be human. We are invited to ride along on their escapades while normalcy never happens.
Critique: the stated plot has almost nothing to do with what the viewer is presented. One is not whisked away into a story about an actual vampire, an actual werewolf, an actual ghost. The viewer is painfully aware, the entire time that they are watching 3 actors go through gobs of mundane and quite ordinary dialogue.
The vampire: the vampire is supposed to be 200 or 300 years old. His subplot is that he is trying to avoid drinking blood. Oh for the love of pete, this has been done to death. When Anne Ryce created the modern vampire, this is exactly what she did. For her it worked, because we are whisked away into a story about an actual vampire. BH never, ever transforms you into a world of real vampires, because the series has no special effects whatsoever. They might as well have done this on stage and narrated the story to us, by a man sitting in a chair reading the story to us.
For instance, this vampire, along with every other vampire, eats, breaths, can be choked, goes to the bathroom, walks around in the sun, gets hurt when he stubs his toe, and categorically is not undead, whatsoever, but neither is any other vampire in the show.
This gets a big fat zero. Quit calling the character a vampire if I'm more vampiric than the character.
The ghost: the ultimate rule **** is that, at some point they relive their death or are torn emotionally. Also, a unique characteristic **** is that they appear "ghostlike". It ruins the imagination and mystery if the ghost is as solid as the football player "The Fridge". This character is the most unghostlike ghost ever. She is completely solid, has absolutely no underworld qualities about her, has a full range of emotions, and has little to no subplot. Her boyfriend / fiance supposedly killed her. Mind you the fiance weighs about 125lbs and stands proudly at 5'4, while she's a solid 160lbs all day long and is not withering violet at 5'10.
What's more is, although the dialogue is written with the thought that the audience is supposed to feel sorry for her, she is nothing more than annoying, whiny, illogical and 2 dimensional.
Furthermore, like the vampire, there are absolutely no ghost "tricks". Oh if you count teleport as a ghost trick. Yes, that's a fantastic special effect, move the actor off screen, viola she teleported.
The werewolf: This character is pathetic. Everything we've come to know, love, care about as being werewolf, is completely gone from this character. In this series, a werewolf is a human that has pms one day out of the month. In all other instances, he's just a regular human.
Frankly this series is a huge waste of time. I don't know if it's the budget or simply the writing. There is absolutely nothing supernatural about this series.
At least, the actors read the lines, adequately. For anyone that actually like werewolves, vampires and ghosts, they should stay away from this series. It offers absolutely nothing.
I started watching the series cause the premise seemed interesting, not knowing what to expect. Saw the first 10 minutes and thought what a boring piece of **** and deleted the torrent. The characters were boring, the acting, direction, story and dialogue rubbish. Main characters all badly developed, concept couldn't be more boring and dull. I don't know if all these positive reviews are from friends of the actors or they just identify with this drivel. It's like taking the boring lives of 20 somethings, and their life style, of any typical twenty something with no depth, and making them into the dullest vampire, warewolf and ghost, amatuerish. Vampire was over acted, the warewolf's thing was rubbing his flabby ass, the ghost was characterless. You have to have character to play a character, of which they all had little. Anything good you can say about a movie or series you can't say about this. Other than they have succeeded if they wanted to make it as dull as possible. 1 point for that just in case...