I have to admit that I am completely underwhelmed by this series. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my vampires, werewolves and ghosts to have some sort of scare factor going for them. Being Human reduces their existence to a particularly irritating episode of Thirtysomething. The supernatural elements seem like extraneous flourishes to a show that is basically just about a trio of whiners trying to make the best of the crappy hand that life has dealt them. I have endured five episodes of the first season and so far they are pretty much uniform in that the three leads basically spend the episode moping and whining about the unfairness of the universe. Rather than anything especially seductive or magical about any of this, they remind one of a psychotically depressed person who entered a party and then tries to bring the entire room down to their level of hopelessness. There are some fairly impressive werewolf transformation effects, but they are usually followed by the subsequently human werewolf kvetching about his sorry lot in life and how hard he has it. The acting is fairly solid, with both Aidan Turner (the vampire) and Russell Tovey (the werewolf) offering hints that they are better than the material they are handed. Some unintentionally comic elements emerge if you catch this on BBC America where the often naked Tovey has his bits blurred to protect us poor prudish Americans from being corrupted. This could have been an interesting concept if the makers offered some degree of levity, imagination or good old-fashioned entertainment value, but the final result comes off as little more than a yammering reunion of the worst relatives in the Debbie Downer family.
Review of Being Human
