Being Human
BBC3
Room for one more? Vampire, I mean. Isn’t there a quota or something? I’d hate popular culture to inadvertently reach fangbanger critical mass and have the whole thing go viral. We have Bill Compton and friends in True Blood, Eli in Let the Right One In, following in the steps of Mick St. John in Moonlight and Angel. Now, in Being Human, we have Mitchell (Aidan Turner), a young, handsome Mick vamp who shares a house with werewolf George (Russell Tovey) and ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow). In theory, they all share equal billing but we know perfectly well that we only really want the interview with the vampire. Ghosts are always strung out on some former lover and werewolves are once a month daytrippers. Fuck them in their lycanthrope ectoplasmic ear.
"In theory, they all share equal billing but we know that we only really want the interview with the vampire. Ghosts are always strung out on some former lover and werewolves are daytrippers. Fuck them in their lycanthrope ectoplasmic ear."
Mitchell is not like vampires of yore. For starters, he can walk around during the day because night-time shoots are expensive and this is BBC3, the network that got rid of Pulling to make way for Coming of Age. Like Angel, like Bill Compton he is on the wagon and battles with his cravings to feed on what William the Bloody liked to call "millions of little happy meals on legs". "People" to you and I.
George is a particularly gimpy werewolf and Russell Tovey plays him just the wrong side of annoying. Less likely to score some ass than an Aerial Telly reader, he sees his wolf phase as a gigantic burden. Finding and handling The Wolf Within has been dealt with brilliantly in the Buffy episode Wild at Heart where the ludicrously sexy female piewolf Veruca1 attempts to persuade Oz to embrace and celebrate his werewolf legacy by a kill and maim rampage or two. But George is no Oz and this is no Buffy.
"George is a particularly gimpy werewolf and Russell Tovey plays him just the wrong side of annoying."
Forming the final part of the triumvirate of the Weird is mixed race ghostpie Annie. In the aforementioned great tradition of cuntstruck ghosts, Annie is strung out on a former lover. It is his house that the freak and the geek are renting and Annie, having scared off the previous tenants, finds a certain solace in her supernatural housemates. They can see her, after all, and most humans can’t. A girl likes to be noticed, even when she no longer exists. Annie is having difficulty moving on. Often the way with ghosts.
"He whinges a great deal and that is boring as he is not an exasperated curmudgeon like Victor Meldrew or a sleazy misanthrope like Rigsby – he’s just a twat."
It was a pretty decent opener. Turner is a plausible charismatic vamp and Crichlow gives good ghost. Tovey makes for a dreary werewolf, though, and at least some of the blame for that must lie with the writers. He whinges a great deal and that is boring as he is not an exasperated curmudgeon like Victor Meldrew or a sleazy misanthrope like Rigsby – he’s just a twat. And having the "werewolf’s secure room being compromised on the very night he changes" scenario in the very first episode shows that they’re not going to bust a gut to avoid the cliches. But it had its moments and it introduced the premise, characters and backstory efficiently without making me want to kill someone so it’s off the hook for now.
The best thing about it: Aidan Turner. Some potential there
The worse thing about it: Russell Tovey. Gimping ain’t easy but nobody’s got to do it.
The verdict on Being Human: Give it time to find its feet .
Marks out of 10: 7
1 Incidentally, whatever happened to Paige Moss who played Veruca? Even by the high standards of Buffy she was a lovely piece of pie. Anyone who has any information on the whereabouts of Pieage should contact Aerial Telly. Motherfucker, he’s not hard to find.