Review: Being Human (UK) Season 1

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.

Being Human

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 of a ghost is that, at some point they relive their death or are torn emotionally. Also, a unique characteristic of a ghost 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.