Being Human — The BBC Experience Continues in America

BBC’s original series Being Human returned to BBC America on Saturday, February 19th.  I don’t know if you heard the chorus of relief echoed by American fans of the original Being Human series, but it was audible and loud.  Although SyFy‘s new imitation Being Human continues to disappoint, the season premiere (and the second episode of the season) of BBC’s Being Human was riveting, hilarious, and disturbing — all in all, excellent.  The British characters of Annie, Mitchell, Nina, and George are real, three-dimensional supernatural beings trying to fit into an often monstrous sea of humanity.  The BBC version of Being Human  is not to be missed!

Being Human on SyFy: Bites, Sucks and Boos

After Being Human‘s premiere last night on the SyFy channel, the biting, sucking and booing has nothing to do with the fact that Josh, Aidin and Sally are a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost.  For full disclosure, I religiously watched the UK version of Being Human over the last two years on BBC America (and I am very put out at the thought that the new contract with SyFy may prevent BBC America from continuing to air the current seasons of the UK version of Being Human to prevent competition with the SyFy’s new reduction of Being Human).  Yes, you heard me, reduction, not production, but reduction of an edgy, biting (dare I add, exsanguinating and haunting) UK original into “a whiny, melodramatic, simplification fit for a highschool audience.”  I am quoting from my sister who has never yet had the opportunity to view the original UK Being Human series, and who loves cheesy science fiction and fantasy, but who was wholly disappointed (as was I) with the premiere of SyFy’s “original” production (read, cut and paste or color by number) of Being Human. 

I am going to resist picking the show apart completely, since I think you, my lovely readers, already get the drift of this review.  However, a few of the most grating elements of the show include the fact that the storyline is almost the same except the dialogue, which lacks the cleverness and edge of the original.  Of all the things to change, what is up with the new names of the characters, Josh (the werewolf), Sally (the ghost), and Aidin (the vampire)?  What is the matter with George, Annie and Mitchell?  Ok, so George is old-fashioned, but so is Sally.  Annie is a perfectly American name from Annie Oakley to the little orphan Annie, and the UK Annie was so adorable and lovable (not like the new ghost, Sally).  Sally just doesn’t have the presence that Annie has and couldn’t draw me into real feelings for her situation.  Aidin (funny, that Aidin Turner is the real name of actor that plays Mitchell in the UK version) just doesn’t smolder like Mitchell (although I know he can find his inner darkness from his role on Smallville).  So, Josh isn’t quite as big a dork as the original George, but the dress was classic and did make me laugh out loud (yes, this is a compliment).  My last criticism for the moment is that if the point of the new version was to make it accessible to American audiences, the backdrop, the locations including the apartment, the hospital, the woods, the foreign car, the wedding crashing bloodbath, just don’t look American to me.  Aside from the witless dialogue, the only Americanization I can see is the reference to Suffolk County and the lack of English accents.

I will likely watch next week, but that will probably be the last time I can stomach the ghostly apparition of a beautiful fantasy drama that was sucked into purgatory (aka, the U.S.) to suffer a living death.  The third season of the BBC’s original Being Human is premiering in the UK on BBC Three on January 23, 2011, but it may be a long time coming to America.

Being Human- Should Be Called Been Human, Done Human in the UK

The BBC original series Being Human is a heart-warming tale of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who just happen to be roommates trying to make it in the big bad world.  Now the recently renamed SyFy channel (personally, not digging the re-branding of the SciFi Channel although I do love a number of SyFy original series) is re-making Being Human in a U.S. friendly format.  It is not clear to me why the perfectly charming and at times dark and moody British version of the series needs to be translated into an American English version.  The SyFy original series premieres Monday, Jan. 17 at 9pm ET/PT on the SyFy Channel.  However, season three of the BBC’s Being Human will likely also premiere in January as well as a new spin-off online series Becoming Human commissioned by Sarah Clay, BBC Multiplatform Drama Commissioner. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/beinghuman/2010/10/new_series_becoming_human.html. I’m not clairvoyant, but I have a feeling that there is a ghost of a chance that the new SyFy version of Being Human is little more than an apparition of its UK version.  That aside, I am a fan of Sam Witwer (Smallville) and am glad to see him in a lead role as a hot-blooded vampire and lady-killer (in every sense of the word).