Being Human X2, BBC & Syfy: Still Enjoying It on Both Sides of the Atlantic

Stop me if you've heard this one.  A ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf are roommates...

     It's not a joke really.  It's the theme for Being Human, a show for the BBC that was recreated in America for the Syfy Network.  The BBC show has started it's 4th Season (or "Series" as the British call it) and the American one is in it's second.

     I’m not sure what is going on with the English show.  Did the actors just feel they needed to move on?  At the end of last season, they had the character of George kill Mitchell by driving a stake through his heart, and I was left wondering how they were going to bring Mitchell back for the fourth season.  They must have something up their sleeve, I thought.  Certainly they don’t just want to kill him off.  After all, they killed off the character of Herrick, the leader of all the vampires in Bristol, at the end of the first season, ripped apart by George the werewolf during the full moon!  At the end of season two, they have two vampires, Cara and Daisy, bleeding over his grave to resurrect him, and he claws his way out of the ground a bloody, muddy mess, only to show up towards the end of the third season as a complete amnesiac.  If the writers could bring back Herrick, surely they could bring back Mitchell!

     However, I realized they had written themselves into a corner.  There weren’t a lot of redeeming qualities for this supposed vampire hero.  Oh, there were some, to be sure, mostly centering on his relationship with George and Annie, but in the end, even Mitchell realized he didn’t have many redeeming qualities.  Along with Daisy, he had killed 20 innocent people in a subway car, and when the authorities were investigating it and started closing in on him, his actions were selfish and horrendous, putting everyone in jeopardy and costing lives.  His main heroic act was to convince George, his best friend, to kill him, thereby fulfilling a prophecy that he would be killed by a werewolf.  Mitchell was a complicated and interesting character, but not much of a heroic protagonist.

     But then the makers of this show did the unthinkable, and perhaps they didn’t really want to.  It might be because Sinead Keenan and Russell Tovey were simply ready to move on.  At any rate, as we return to the former Bed and Breakfast where our remaining heroes live on Barry Island in South Wales, we find that Nina has given birth to a daughter who spells a prophetic doom for the vampire community.  In the first episode, we also learn that Nina had already been killed by vampires shortly after the birth, and George has become a shell of the man he was, having lost his best friend, and the love of his life.  Standing guard over the crib of his new daughter was changing him, making him hard.  He was not the same lovable neurotic.  And then they killed him off!  I felt like I did at the beginning of Alien³ when they killed off the entire cast of the movie Aliens!  How dare they!

     Yet I’m also a realist.  Perhaps the actors just wanted to move on, and the producers felt they still had more stories to tell, and truthfully, we still had Lenora Crichlow as Annie, promising a dying George that she would protect his baby daughter at any cost.  But the show was always about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf living together in a world full of humans.  That’s why the title is “Being Human”.  It’s what they were always striving to be, even though they weren’t.  So with the vampire Mitchell gone, and now the werewolves George and Nina, that left just the ghost, Annie.  How were the producers going to remake it into what it had always been?

Damien Molony, Lenora Crichlow, and Michael Socha as Hal, Annie, and Tom, the new  cast of the BBC Series 4

     Enter Tom McNair and Hal.  Fans were already familiar with Tom.  George and Nina, who were about to have a possible “werewolf” baby of their own, had come across Tom and his “Dad” McNair when they thought Tom had been born a werewolf.  That turned out not the be the case, and McNair, who taught Tom everything he knew about hunting and killing vampires, turned out not to be Tom’s real dad.  Still, he was the only dad Tom had ever known, and since he died at the end of the last season, that left Tom on his own, a young werewolf who was connected to Annie through George and Nina and their defenseless little baby daughter Eve.  And I’d have to admit, I liked the character of Tom.  Actor Michael Socha managed to bring a humanity to him that was appealing.  So far so good.

     Now then, where to find another vampire who might want to take up house with a ghost and a werewolf?  The answer:  a vampire who had already been living for a long time with another ghost and werewolf!  Leo is introduced as an old black man and werewolf who is suffering from the pain of the transformations.  He might not live much longer.  For the past half a century, he has been helping the vampire Hal control his vampiric urges, and it has worked.  In the same house with them is the ghost of Pearl, a woman who died in the 50’s, which is revealed immediately by her hair and style of dress.  They come to Annie (and the prophetic Eve, daughter of two werewolves) seeking answers, and while there, Leo’s health deteriorates.  He will not survive another werewolf transformation.  Annie figures out that Leo and Pearl have always loved each other, but never admitted it.  Right before he dies, they admit it to each other, and when his death door shows up, hers shows up as well.  All she needed to move on all this time was to admit to Leo that she loved him.  When they pass over together, they leave Hal behind.  Annie is more than willing to take him in, and in the first few episodes, he and Tom come to an understanding and start forming an actual friendship.

     This could still work, even without my favorite characters of George and Nina.  I was impressed with the story involving Leo and Pearl that brought Hal to live with Annie and Tom, as well as Tom’s story, and the actors playing them, and I’ve always liked the character of Annie as well.  Being that they lost most of the cast and had to start from scratch, I’m fairly impressed with how they managed to reinvent it.

I was rather indifferent to the American version of the show last season.  The show had a few strengths; just a few things I liked more than the BBC version, most notably the ghost effects for the character of Sally, but everything else seemed to pale when compared with the BBC show.  Josh was likeable, but not as much as George, and his relationship with Nora was not as endearing as George and Nina’s.  Sally was cute and bubbly, but then again, so was Annie.  Although I like the ghost effects better on the American version, the more organic werewolf effects on the BBC show were preferable, and the finished werewolves were definitely scarier.  Since this was the American version, they had to make it somewhat like the BBC show, and so the first season followed the plots of the British show’s first season, for the most part.  I found myself disliking most of the storylines that strayed from the BBC show, such as the “Old Ones” returning to keep Bishop under control, though I did like the episode where Josh showed up at home again and Aiden arrived later for a comedic dinner scene.  I also found myself cringing at the similar storylines they managed to keep pretty much in tact, with less appealing characters and a few unwelcome twists.  The final showdown that left George facing off against Herrick and scratching his girlfriend on the BBC show was handled much differently, and poorly, on the Syfy show, as was the entire subplot about the vampire roommate and the girlfriend and then the little boy he turned.  All of this was handled much better on the English show.  The Syfy show had its moments, but paled compared to the English original.

Sam Huntington, Sam Witwer, and Meaghan Rath as Josh, Aiden, and Sally from the Syfy version

     Then season 2 hit and they took it in a whole new direction; and I like it.  Oh sure, the vampire stuff is still hard to swallow.  As with Mitchell and his ongoing struggle with his own bloodlust and his connection with all the other vampires, Aiden is headed down this similar, gory, unredeemable path.  But things are heating up with Josh, as Nora became a werewolf, and under the influence of a couple of twin, purebred werewolves, killed her former boyfriend and embraced the monster within her, much to Josh’s horror.  Even better is the ongoing storyline for poor Sally.  Whereas the writers for the BBC show didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with Annie, having her hang out with a psychic or take care of a ghost baby in season 2 or simply become little more than Mitchell’s love interest in season 3, things around Sally are always hopping.  Thinking a reaper has been after her, and after facing off against Danny, the ghost of the man who killed her, the reaper appears and shreds Danny, telling Sally that to create a balance in the universe, he’s either going to have to shred her too, or she must become a reaper.  Now it seems as though Sally has gone crazy.  There never was a reaper.  It was her all along, and she’s the one responsible for shredding all the ghosts she blamed on the reaper!  There was never a storyline like that for little ol’ Annie, and it now makes this American version seem more vibrant and exciting than the BBC version.

     I still like my BBC show.  It’s a little more quaint, perhaps a bit more eccentric and charming in an offbeat sort of way.  The vampires are often bloody and repulsive, but at the same time, in half transformation, George looks just a bit ridiculous.  That’s all part of its English charm.  Meanwhile, the Syfy version is taking this story into places it hasn’t been before, and I like it, especially the whole narrative surrounding Sally.  The vampires I could really take or leave, and they have always been the one element I’ve had the most trouble with while watching both shows.  Some of those sex scenes on both shows with the vampires covered in blood are simply disgusting.  But there is enough going on here with all the other characters – and even occasionally the vampires – that keeps me coming back for more… in America AND England!

Damien Molony (the vampire Hal) and Michael Socha (the werewolf Tom) give a thumbs up!