A werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost...
... share a house in Bristol. One assumes that wackiness would ensue, but it really doesn't. Yes, I've been watching Being Human, and being rather disappointed with it.
Poor little George, the werewolf, is clearly supposed to be nice young chap, the kind your mother wishes you'd marry or be, who became a werewolf after being attacked a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the series creators have gone to such lengths to show how un-wolf-like George is, they've ended up with him just being a a huge wuss, and whiny with it (he starts getting particularly squeaky when under stress). Russell Tovey has an annoying speech pattern too - the watered-down estuarine accent isn't the issue, so much as the complete lack of glottal stops. This makes his speech sound stilted and over-precise, and whilst this may be intended to reflect the character's need for order and control in his life, in reality it just sounds as unnatural as a child reading speech from a book. Ultimately, for all his niceness, George comes across as a cowardly, whiny, petulant teenager
Annie, the ghost, is another deeply annoying character. Finding herself more-or-less stuck in the house she recently died in, she's acquired George and Mitchell as house-mates. She is still devoted to her fiancé, the odious Owen, and spends much of the first few episodes pining over him like a kicked puppy. When it's explained to her that the reason she's still here in Bristol (rather than having moved on into the light) is that she has unresolved business, she decides that she is meant to spend the rest of Owen's life being the wife to him that she was not able to be in life. And by "wife", she clearly means maid/servant/slave, since she immediately starts ironing his shirts, cooking food for him, making sure he has fluffy towels waiting when he has a shower. She believes his new girlfriend has stolen the life that should rightfully have been hers, and acts like a stroppy teenager about it. The reality of the situation was obvious to the audience from the first episode, but it took until episode three for Annie to "remember" how she died. And then, in keeping with the stroppy teenager act, she turns into a poltergeist as a coping strategy.
Mitchell, the vampire, is by far the most interesting character, in no small part because he's the one who spends the least amount of time acting like annoying teen. Turned roughly a hundred years ago, Mitchell occasionally acts like he's seen a hundred years of life and death. Mostly he doesn't. At the start of the series, he's just turned a young woman, and this acts as the catalyst for a change of heart in him; he stops feeding, stops killing, and does what he can to stop her from killing too.
Every episode so far has had scenes so dreadful I've had to leave the room to escape the idiocy and embarrassment. And yet, they play with the conventions of the genre and mythos (particularly with the vampires) in a way that I'm intrigues me. Vampires clearly consider themselves top of the supernatural pile, which seems fairly normal, but here there is also a sort of vampiric mafia; a group that organises, protects and controls the vamps. The guy in charge is the same guy who turned Mitchell, and seems oddly keen to have Mitchell back in the fold. Vampires can go out in the sunlight - indeed, in one episode they seem to make a point of Mitchell repeatedly leaving the house and studying the cloudless blue sky - but their image cannot be captured on film. No-one yet has mentioned stakes through the heart or holy water. George only wolfs out one day a lunar month, but he suffers extreme pain (and a heart attack) when he does. Whether a ghost can be seen or not by others is almost entirely dependent on his or her state of mind at the time.
I'm just not sure that the fun of watching a new version of the old stories being created makes up for the turgid crap and weak annoying characters that make up the bulk of the show
Poor little George, the werewolf, is clearly supposed to be nice young chap, the kind your mother wishes you'd marry or be, who became a werewolf after being attacked a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the series creators have gone to such lengths to show how un-wolf-like George is, they've ended up with him just being a a huge wuss, and whiny with it (he starts getting particularly squeaky when under stress). Russell Tovey has an annoying speech pattern too - the watered-down estuarine accent isn't the issue, so much as the complete lack of glottal stops. This makes his speech sound stilted and over-precise, and whilst this may be intended to reflect the character's need for order and control in his life, in reality it just sounds as unnatural as a child reading speech from a book. Ultimately, for all his niceness, George comes across as a cowardly, whiny, petulant teenager
Annie, the ghost, is another deeply annoying character. Finding herself more-or-less stuck in the house she recently died in, she's acquired George and Mitchell as house-mates. She is still devoted to her fiancé, the odious Owen, and spends much of the first few episodes pining over him like a kicked puppy. When it's explained to her that the reason she's still here in Bristol (rather than having moved on into the light) is that she has unresolved business, she decides that she is meant to spend the rest of Owen's life being the wife to him that she was not able to be in life. And by "wife", she clearly means maid/servant/slave, since she immediately starts ironing his shirts, cooking food for him, making sure he has fluffy towels waiting when he has a shower. She believes his new girlfriend has stolen the life that should rightfully have been hers, and acts like a stroppy teenager about it. The reality of the situation was obvious to the audience from the first episode, but it took until episode three for Annie to "remember" how she died. And then, in keeping with the stroppy teenager act, she turns into a poltergeist as a coping strategy.
Mitchell, the vampire, is by far the most interesting character, in no small part because he's the one who spends the least amount of time acting like annoying teen. Turned roughly a hundred years ago, Mitchell occasionally acts like he's seen a hundred years of life and death. Mostly he doesn't. At the start of the series, he's just turned a young woman, and this acts as the catalyst for a change of heart in him; he stops feeding, stops killing, and does what he can to stop her from killing too.
Every episode so far has had scenes so dreadful I've had to leave the room to escape the idiocy and embarrassment. And yet, they play with the conventions of the genre and mythos (particularly with the vampires) in a way that I'm intrigues me. Vampires clearly consider themselves top of the supernatural pile, which seems fairly normal, but here there is also a sort of vampiric mafia; a group that organises, protects and controls the vamps. The guy in charge is the same guy who turned Mitchell, and seems oddly keen to have Mitchell back in the fold. Vampires can go out in the sunlight - indeed, in one episode they seem to make a point of Mitchell repeatedly leaving the house and studying the cloudless blue sky - but their image cannot be captured on film. No-one yet has mentioned stakes through the heart or holy water. George only wolfs out one day a lunar month, but he suffers extreme pain (and a heart attack) when he does. Whether a ghost can be seen or not by others is almost entirely dependent on his or her state of mind at the time.
I'm just not sure that the fun of watching a new version of the old stories being created makes up for the turgid crap and weak annoying characters that make up the bulk of the show