From the advertising and the premise Being Human appears to be a comedy that’s a cross between The Munsters and Friends, as a group of supernatural beings try to live a normal existence in Bristol and hilarity ensues. If you went into it with the preconception of watching a laugh-a-minute romp then you were most likely disappointed at what you saw.
No, to describe Being Human properly is to say that it’s a dark drama that’s quite bloody in places and has touches of horror throughout with the occasional joke thrown in for good measure – Demons it ain’t.
All Characters have Issues Connected to their Monster Life
The first episode focused mainly on introducing the characters: 100-year-old vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) struggles to resist his blood lust and go cold-turkey, ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) sees that her fiancé in life has met someone else and George (Russell Tovey) has nowhere to transform into a werewolf in safety.
What was good is that all three characters have major issue to deal with in their lives which are connected to the unfortunate circumstances they find themselves in and transcends the whole crazy people together/odd-couple set up that some of the adverts would have you believe. The theme is based around loss and addiction, but also friendship that’s easy to relate to.
There were also rumblings of an interesting sub-plot about a vampire conspiracy that will no doubt build to the series conclusion.
Not Funny Enough to be called a Comedy
With this focus on character driven story, and the young cast do a great job in their roles, the show is well written and presented. Some of the special effects were very good for a TV show; the werewolf transformation borrowed heavily from the harrowing scene in An American Werewolf In London and looked a lot better than the CGI mess seen in the terrible Underworld films.
But there are downsides and the main negative with Being Human is that the BBC or who whoever makes these decisions is pushing it as a comedy-drama, but that’s such a reckless term to use as anyone expecting another 20-something farce full of beautiful people where all the jokes are about sex will be disappointed by the lack of belly laughs.
That’s not to say there wasn’t any normal life flat stuff or that there weren’t a few funny lines, the bit where George said he killed pigeon with a shoe was quite good, but Memento is funny in parts and that’s not a comedy.
Good, Depending on how you View it
Ultimately the way you critique Being Human depends on how you see it as a TV programme.
If you view it as a comedy then it’s simply not funny enough to hold your attention and the running time of an hour per episode is much too long. But if you see it as a serious drama that takes a unique spin on an overused subject that actually has a solid theme running through it then it’s one of the best things BBC Three has ever shown.
Being Human is shown on BBC Three on Sunday’s at 9pm and the first episode is repeated on BBC iPlayer.
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