As a college student type, I can appreciate both the pros and cons of the whole ‘Share house’ scene- on the one hand, you have some people to help you pay the bills and can make lifelong friends- on the other hand, there can be all sorts of hygiene and relationship troubles. One minute you’re all painting each other’s toenails or sharing a pizza, the next you’re arguing over who ate all the B+ blood bags in the fridge, because they were clearly marked as yours and there’s only AB- left; the vampire never orders garlic bread *with* the pizza; the werewolf is always wandering around naked, but you should see the amount of hair he clogs up the shower drains with and whilst the ghost may be great at scaring off Jehovah’s Witnesses, when it comes time to pay for this month’s phone bill suddenly she remembers that since she’s an intangible spirit with no physical body, she doesn’t actually have money in her purse. Typical! So let’s all wait until the weird roomie that individually labels her weetabix brix has left the room and then we’ll all talk about her behind her back – just as soon as we’ve chatted about that dreamy new tenant, BEING HUMAN (Fridays, ABC2-9:20pm)
BEING HUMAN is a Horror/Sci-Fi/Drama/Comedy, made and set in Britain; think BUFFY, only chillier, and it’s the whole cast that has bad teeth, not just the vampires. Set in the working class town of Bristol, the series introduces three friends sharing a flat who appear to be normal young people. Only they’re actually none of those things- normal, young or people. George is a werewolf, Mitchell a vampire, and Annie a spectre.
BEING HUMAN started its (Un) life as a stand-alone , 90 minute special in 2008, in which best friends George (gay actor Russell Tovey) and Mitchell (Guy Flannigan) move into a flat together to throw suspicion off their supernatural nocturnal activities. This works, but everyone they meet assumes they’re a gay couple, meaning that suspicion has now fallen onto their everyday nocturnal activities. They quickly meet Annie (Andrea Riseborough) the ghost of the flat’s former owner (she also assumes George and Mitchell are a couple). After some initial squabbling, they decide to all live together and pretend to be human, kind of like Eighties’ sitcom THREE’S COMPANY, only less creepy.
The stand-alone BEING HUMAN was retooled at the beginning of 2009 and became the current series- Russell Tovey remains in the cast as reluctant werewolf George, but Annie is now played by Lenore Critchlow and Mitchell by Aidan Turner. The program too, ‘shifted direction’ from light horror/drama to light horror/comedy. Although the show is dumbed down and neither actor are nowhere near as good as their pilot counterparts (Turner, in particular, fails rather spectacularly to convey a vampire- I think it’s probably the ‘all-over tan’ that makes me somewhat dubious) but it’s still a neat show.
George is the best thing about the program. Played by a hot, openly gay actor, George is a sweet hospital intern who was turned by a bite from another backpacker-turned werewolf whilst backpacking across Scotland.
Mitchell is a hundred- something vampire who was turned by a pack of bloodsuckers whilst he lay dying in a French battlefield during World War I. Original actor Guy Flannigan was cute and sweet and played the role subtly. New Mitchell, Aidan Turner, is fugly and plays the role with the subtlety of a flock of vampire bats on a sugar high after eating a busload of diabetic children. Plus there’s the aforementioned tan – you’d have thought someone in the makeup department might have thought ‘Hmmm… vampire…sun….tan…bad’.
Annie is a poltergeist/ghost/spectre/spirit who used to own the flat before her hyper-conservative boyfriend chucked one hell of a wobbly when he found she wore a g-string and tossed her down a flight of stairs and killed her. She’s an atheist, which is part of the reason she’s a ghost- she doesn’t *want* to move on- she’s seen the afterlife with the ‘hammers and ropes’ and she’s frightened by it (we deduce throughout the series that something nasty and ever-hungry awaits us on the other side of death- and I don’t just mean Bernard King)
Hot guys, Gay subtext, naked men, and fanged beasts running around up the whazoo- this is one share-house you’d be glad to pitch in with! (if not clean up after)
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