Being Human – is inhumanly stupid
Being Human is a new BBC3 ‘comedy’ about three twenty-something housemates – Annie, Mitchell and George – who are trying to live normal lives, despite the fact that Annie’s a ghost, Mitchell’s a vampire and George is a werewolf. Just your average suburban existences really…
And it should have been at least amusing, if only because it’s so ludicrous a concept, but it wasn’t. It was just stupid. The entire premise was stupid and we were thrown into the deep end of just accepting that these ‘beings’ were, and not only were, they’d found each other and now shared a flat.
Righteo… that’s likely…
Within minutes of the programme starting we discovered that Annie was finally starting to be seen by ordinary people, which made her inordinately happy, obviously, and Mitchell had sworn off drinking the blood of others; noblesse oblige and all that. George meanwhile was trying really hard to stop turning into a werewolf because well, he just didn’t like doing it.
The plot galloped along with Annie’s mortal fiancé being the trio’s landlord and Mitchell trying his best not to eat nurse Becca while George still kept trying not to be a werewolf while being the voice of reason… in a house full of freaks, it wasn’t an easy task.
This was rather like Friends, Dead Set and X Men had morphed into one completely ludicrous mutant of a show that included sex, and frankly, it should be shot with a silver bullet, garlic or whatever else will make it go away.
Yep, unwanted facial hair angers me too...
However, the high-quality special effects and astonishingly good acting – given their roles – on the parts of Lenora Crichlow as Annie, Aidan Turner as Mitchell and Russell Tovey as George were the only reasons I made it to the end of this first episode. They’re wasted on this show.
THE only laugh out loud moment was when George was attracted to a nurse and told her she smelled like a polo mint, then followed that smooth line with the crushingly bad, “Do you have a hole?”
Exit nurse, understandably enough.
But that was it; funny stuff over.
What did you think of it?
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I enjoyed it. But then
a) I’d seen the pilot last year (with different actors for Mitchell and Annie) and that did a lot of the setup that you felt was missing. It showed how they all came to live together etc.
b) I didn’t see it as a comedy primarily but a fantasy/horror drama with the odd bit of humour.
Most of your review seems to be based around the fact that you didnt find the show funny, which I find strange seeing as how the show isnt supposed to be a comedy, it is a drama which happes to have occasional comedic moments.
The set up of how they all came to live together, was handled in the pilot episode (which if you are really desperate to find out is up on youtube) and it all made perfect sense to me.
My biggest and only real ctitiscm was Lenora Crichlow performnce. The lovable, sweet, insequre, quirky and funny Annie we saw in the pilot as played by the sublime Andrea Risseborough was gone. And replaced by a bland quirk free pretty girl, who cant really do comedy. A shame as Annie was by far the best charchter in the pilot, due to lines like this
“I always fancied being in Hufflepuff, Cause I always imagined in Hufflepuff they just sit around and make things with saftery scissors and glitter”
I cant imagine these words leaving the mouth of the Annie I saw on Sunday night sadly.
But Andrea is gone and she isnt likely to come back so I guess im just going to have to put up with Lenora Crichlow.
This and Generation Kill on FX made for the best sunday night TV I have seen in a while
I was also a bit perplexed by the initial lack of a back-story, but everything was revealed, flash-back style, in the final episode.
Patience is a virtue.