Being Human - Review

Being Human Season 4 episode 1: Eve of the War

Sundays 9pm BBC Three

Feeling I had missed the boat slightly on British vampire series Being Human I thought I’d give the fourth series a watch.

I’m glad I did. 

A plethora of slick, stylized US offerings have glorified impossibly good-looking and impossibly broody vampires and other preternatural beings. You know who you are Vampire Diaries.

But this show lends a gritty and almost credible charm to such a tired subject matter and, shock horror, there’s even some humour thrown in.

This episode opens in London 2037 where werewolves and ghosts have joined forces to resist the imminent coming of the ‘Old Ones.’  An ancient scroll is unearthed which prophesizes the birth of a human baby, known as The War Child, who will end the reign of these vice-seeking harridans.

The writing and characterization are the real highlights here, writer and creator Toby Whithouse conveys a humanity to these supernatural creatures that is perhaps the reason behind the shows’ cult fan base.

There is also a freshness to his scripting, the cull of a considerable number of popular characters at the end of the last series was a bold risk but one that appears to have paid off.

Lovable scamp of a werewolf, Tom and wonderfully serene ghost, Annie are able to come to the fore while 500 year-old vampire Hal gives a commanding performance as he is forced out of a self-imposed incarceration to protect the world from his blood-lust.

A naïve bloodsucker from called Dewi sparkles in a small role that adds comic relief in a lilting Welsh accent; “Do I talk too much? My mother can't stand it. She has to lie on the sofa with a door sausage over her head.”

As for the baddies, Cutler is dressed to kill as the sharp-tonged young predator looking to shake the cobwebs off his archaic elders and Mark Williams is at his Brummie best playing the seemingly bumbling ‘Vampire Recorder’.      

                                        

The score is atmospheric and its symphonic melodies add gravitas to the acting and allow the plot to move seamlessly from humour to drama.

One negative is the low-budget prosthetics and the only area the show comes up lacking against its US counterparts.  The transformation of the werewolves is well acted and favorably lit but the end result misses the mark, resembling something of a rabid Basil Brush.

But then the beauty of this series is its unpretentiousness, it never pretends to be a Bram Stoker classic but it’s definitely worth a watch.

It represents what British drama-comedy has always been celebrated for, a likeable and down-to-earth humour that thankfully doesn’t take itself too seriously.

It’s a kind of fiendish mix between Two Pints of Lager and Misfits. You’ll like it.