The World of "Being Human"

Like all geeks, I have my share of obsessions, things I fangirl about. "Fangirling"has emerged as a recent slang term to describe the outsize, overemotional reaction to people or things that are the object of the fangirl's obsession; the term is also used to describe gatherings (real or online) of like-minded females to discuss said obsessions at great length, or the incessant writing or gushing about them in any forum she can find. While the term fanboy exists as well, it doesn't seem to be as pejorative, or, at least, doesn't seem to imply the sheer sentimentality and swooniness that fangirling does.

So if you, Unknown Reader, will grant me the latitude, I will devote this post to fangirling about the British television show, "Being Human." This show has just completed its fifth and final season on BBC3, much to my and its fanbase's sorrow. Even The Guardian waxed indignant over the cancellation of the show in its March 8, 2013 blog posting. No, this is not just defensive citing of critical authority to justify my own crazed passion. Well, yes, actually, it is.

Here is the premise of the show: a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost rent a flat together in Bristol. Sounds like the setup for a really dreadful joke, doesn't it? Which is precisely what I thought when I first heard of this program (or, since it's BBC, should I say, "programme"?) several years ago. I dismissed it as riding the wave of the Twilight- and "True Blood"-inspired madness, a cheap televisual knock-off of the lucrative teenage girl-focussed vampire/werewolf craze. But I kept hearing critical acclaim for the series, and I finally decided to give it a try so that I could mock it with a clear conscience.

I watched the first episode in the spirit of derision and was instantly completely hooked. Within a month or so I had watched all five seasons, the most recent ones in grainy, jumpy cuts on illegal YouTube posts uploaded in Great Britain. Thus, I became part of the national pandemic of binge-watching (the back-to-back watching of multiple episodes or entire television series in a short period of time), as decried by a July 2012 article in Slate. Would it have been better if I had waited a decent interval, say, a week, between consuming each episode? Undoubtedly. But I was in the grip of an addiction. In my defense, I did limit myself to one episode a day. Mostly.

Toby Whithouse

So, what exactly is the appeal of this quirky show? The writing, mainly, by the brainy, inspired, and mad Toby Whithouse. Each episode focuses on one of the main characters in turn, at the same time weaving in continuing plotlines for the other two, and each season has its own story arc. Rules get changed along the way (for example, in Season 1 a vampire threatens to bite the werewolf when he's in human form, whereas in Season 3 it's given out that werewolf blood is deadly poison to vampires), and there are minor inconsistencies here and there (for example, the inscription on Annie's gravestone changes), but for the most part the whole structure coheres beautifully. The show is by turns poignant, terrifying, hilarious, gory, creepy, uplifting, and tragic. And Whithouse leaves little room for transition: the shifting tones pile one on top of the other like waves on a beach. While I have seen it described in one place as a drama, and in another as comedy, the show evades all efforts to categorize it as one genre or another. In Season 1, episode 5, "Where the Wild Things Are," the final 10 minutes are a roller coaster of slapstick, white-knuckle chase scenes, tragedy, mysticism, low humor, surprise, and violence, ending in a cliffhanger that must have given the original viewers a week of agonizing suspense (sorry to be so enigmatic here, but I don't want to give anything away) before the ultimate resolution in episode 6.

Aidan Turner, Lenora Crichlow, Russell Tovey

Then there are the amazing actors. In the first three seasons, these consisted of: Lenora Crichlow playing Annie, the sweet, relentlessly upbeat ghost whose generosity of spirit manifests itself in the brewing of copious mugs of tea (none of which she can drink, as she's a ghost); Russell Tovey playing George, the jumpy, histrionic, fastidious werewolf who is in denial over his "condition" as he delicately calls it; and Aidan Turner playing Mitchell, the brooding, sexy Irish vampire with a dark and violent past who has sworn off blood and is making an effort to join the human race. Hence the title, "Being Human." The entire series is a reflection on what it means to be human, what it means to be a "monster," how we rationalize our actions, how much we can help what we do when it is part of our nature. Mitchell is constantly being criticized by his fellow vampires as acting counter to nature in his renunciation of blood; in "Being Human," this questioning of what is "natural" is the whole point of what it means to be a moral being. These monsters are social misfits, outsiders looking enviously in at the rest of society.

According to an interview by U.K. blogger Jason Arnopp, Whithouse claimed that he was originally asked to make a show about a group of friends who buy a house together. He wasn't terribly thrilled with the idea, but he started work on it, making the three characters a shy agoraphobe, a fastidious prig who loves order, and a recovering sex addict. After several months of frustrated tinkering with the script, he decided to give it a supernatural twist. Thus, the shy person became a ghost, the fastidious one a werewolf who is trying to distance himself to the thing that happens to him when the moon is full, and the sex addict a vampire who has abjured blood.

Original cast of "Being Human" in pilot

The pilot was one of six commissioned by BBC3, and it was rejected in favor of another show, "Phoo Attack" (I have no idea, either). Quick note here: since the Beeb is governmentally owned and is a public service entity, it can't just make pilots that are shopped around privately as the networks in the U.S. do. These six pilots were all publicly aired, and one was selected to be serialized. This show that "won" ended up not being very popular and was dropped early on. In the meantime, there had been growing enthusiasm for the "Being Human" pilot, with people writing in to the BBC and signing petitions, so BBC3 replaced "Phoo Attack" with "Being Human." Two of the original actors, Guy Flanagan as the vampire Mitchell and Andrea Riseborough as the ghost Annie, were either dropped or unavailable, and, thankfully, Turner and Crichlow replaced them. Tovey as George remained, for which I am grateful: George is the stable, decent center around which the troubled Mitchell and the flighty Annie revolve. The pilot seems to be completely unavailable for viewing, except for snippets that fans have uploaded to YouTube.

Season 5 cast: Tom, Alex, and Hal

In Season 2, Nina, a nurse turned werewolf, evolved from minor role to principal character, but then she, George, and Mitchell all vanished by the second episode of Season 4, and a new werewolf and vampire were added. Finally, Annie left at the end of Season 4, and a new ghost who entered the series near the end of Season 4 completed the (unholy) Trinity in Season 5. So the fifth and final season contained none of the original cast. Such overwhelming changes are usually indicators of the imminent death of a popular series; in this case, there was a sort of refreshing renewal. None of the new characters were pale imitations of the earlier ones; they were originals in their own right. The new cast comprised Damien Molony as Hal, the "posh," handsome, courtly vampire with OCD tendencies whose youthful appearance belies his 500-year-old medieval origins; Michael Socha as Tom, the caterpillar-browed, moody teenage werewolf with a nearly impenetrable Derby accent (at one point Hal even comments: "Are there subtitles for this conversation?"); and Kate Bracken as Alex, the cheeky Scottish tomboy, stuck forever in the girly clothes she died in, trying to make sense of her brutally shortened life.

Michael Socha, Damien Molony, Kate Bracken

So why do I love this show so much? Because it's mind-blowingly awesome! the fangirl in me wants to scream. But I'll try to give a more dignified and reasoned response. I love it because of the care that went into every line of dialogue, because of the show's schizophrenic nature–it can't decide whether it wants to be horror, sitcom, thriller, or morality play–because of how much the actors embrace their roles, especially Tovey, whose tortured screams and contorted, naked body signify both the physical torment and vulnerability he undergoes in his transformations to werewolf, as well as the mental anguish that leaving his humanity behind entails. Molony, too, with his endless obsessive rituals and twitching facial muscles to show the sheer effort it takes to keep the bloodlust in check, completely inhabits the character of Hal. When he finally does give in to his dark side, it's both terrifying and comic. Whithouse gives him a macabre, funny scene singing an Irving Berlin song as he converts a pub full of people he has just killed to vampires:

Hal sings "Puttin' on the Ritz" (mild spoiler)

Andrew Gower as Cutler

Even the villains are masterpieces of complexity: by turns charming, oily, pedantic, sadistic, pathetic, creepy, or just plain violent, but never one-dimensional or predictable. My personal favorite is Nick Cutler, the slimy solicitor vampire with a tragic back-story who tries to stage a PR coup for the vampires. He even sets up a focus group to bounce his ideas off of–genius! Unfortunately, the other vampires, lacking his vision, eat his focus group before he can collect enough data. One doesn't know whether to laugh uproariously as he tries to decipher the responses on the blood-spattered clipboards or to turn away in horror from the savaged corpses lying near their overturned plastic folding chairs. Both, I guess.

The final season is currently running on BBC America, but I don't have cable, so I'm waiting for the preordered discs that are supposed to ship some time in mid-August. It's bittersweet anticipation, because I know the series has been cancelled. Nonetheless, I'm readying my fangirl squeals of delight for the final showdown between good and evil. Or is it between the ordinary evil we can understand and ultimate, unfathomable evil? Is the condition of being human inevitably and inextricably bound up in causing harm to others, or can we emulate the monsters in this show and try to evade our own worser natures? The virtue lies in the trying, rather than in the succeeding.

[One final note: do not watch the American version of this show (SyFy channel), except for purposes of mockery. Although Toby Whithouse is named as one of the co-producers of that program, it's terrible in the writing and only adequate in the acting. After four episodes I couldn't bear to watch any further. Feel free to disagree with me, but you're wrong.]