Sticks And Ropes was a huge improvement on last week’s series opener for Being Human. The episode – which made Alex a babysitter for an obnoxious Victorian ghost and pit Hal and Tom against each other in a competition at the hotel – largely addressed the deficiencies in The Trinity.
Annie and Alex get ready to fight. This is going to be HOT!
Tonight’s Being Human finale opens in 2022, in a grim, dystopian future where the vampires have taken over the earth, and humans need “internal travel visas” to move around the country. As we kick off, we see Mark Gatiss’s sinister Mr. Snow interrogating a trembling father who’s innocently visiting a sick relative with his daughter. Or is he?
The War Child completed the cycle of change that this series of Being Human began eight short weeks ago. We’ve lost beloved friends, but gained some intriguing new ones. The mythology of the show has changed, but yet as the titles rolled, the show had returned to its roots, with a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all living under one roof in apparent harmony. Spoilers after the jump! Seriously.
Cutler and Hal (Damien Molony) looking slightly greasy in 'Making History'
The historical link between Hal and Cutler is revealed in Making History, the penultimate episode in this season of Being Human. Annie has a guided tour of the post-apocalyptic future with Ghost Eve, while Alex establishes herself as the queen of the withering romantic put-down. Phew! We’ve got a lot to get through!
Gratuitous shirtless Hal shot! You're welcome 
We flashback to 1950 to see Hal at his most wicked talking to his court-apointed lawyer, a certain Mr. Cutler. He tells Cutler that destiny has chosen him for great things and proceeds to make Cutler into a vampire. Shocking revelation #1: Hal made Cutler! But not content with that, Hal insisted (as you do), that Cutler drain his own wife to cut ties with humanity. Cutler dithers over this decision because his wife’s actually pretty cute and it seems a shame to eat her. So Hal takes matters into his own hands and drains her, feeding the blood to Cutler in a sadistic twist later.
Most of the episode centers around the reversal in fortunes for Hal and Cutler. We forget that Hal has been in hiding for the last 50 years, but when encountering vampires like Fergus and Cutler, it serves as a reminder that he’s developed this OCD and is really quite vulnerable. Cutler, naturally, exploits this by offering Hal blood. As you might expect, Hal promptly goes off the rails and becomes quite unstable around Tom, Eve and even Alex.
As the episode hinges on this notion of Hal’s sadistic past coming back to haunt him, we arrive at a point where Cutler reveals his nefarious plan – to trick Tom into becoming a werewolf, then launching him on unsuspecting clubbers – but also offers Hal another glass of blood. Except, we later discover that Cutler has captured and drained Alex in a copy of his wife’s murder.
Can Annie do what it takes to save the world from vampires?
Annie willingly goes through a door with Eve to discover the grim future that’s due to unfold. Eve paints a picture of a future in which the vampires massacred the human population, and though some countries managed to keep the vampire threat at bay, eventually the refugee crisis caused them to have to negotiate. Two things are slightly disjointed about this story:
Either way, this plot ends with Annie being told that she simply needs to step aside at the appointed hour – something will happen to threaten baby Eve’s life and she simply has to let it happen. Coming from the ghost who admitted that she sent creepy Kirby, this is not advice I’d be inclined to trust.
Kate Bracken gets the pick of the lines in 'Making History'
There were a couple of references to Mitchell tonight that made me miss that introspective old vampire, but also realise how far along Being Human has come in the last 7 episodes. The concept behind the series has changed completely, and we’re now facing down a vampire massacre of the human race. Presumably our unlikely heroes will have to come together in the end to fight against the vampire threat. There were some beautiful notes of reluctance between Tom and Annie in Making History that shows they know they’ll have to do some things they’re not happy about for the greater good.
I thought this episode in particular was potentially confusing to viewers. It dabbled a little bit with alternate futures. Eve wanted to change the future by moving Hal into the house with Annie and Tom. That may have made a difference. We’re not sure yet. We’ll have to wait until next week’s finale to find out.
It seems that if you have JJ Abrams involved in your TV project then its more than likely going to be a hit. He introduced the world to Jennifer Garner in Alias, got most of us all confused with Lost and most recently we have had the even stranger Fringe.
The latest programme to have his name on the opening credits, albeit as an executive producer, is Alcatraz which judging from its first episode is a lot easier to follow than Abrams’ previous work.
The show focuses on Rebecca Madsen a San Francisco detective who, when we first meet her, is still struggling to cope with the death of her partner and is reluctant to be paired with another cop. She is sent to the scene of the murder of a former warden from Alcatraz and it’s not long before the case is taken over by the mysterious FBI agent Emerson Hauser.
As I am not a woman I really don’t know how many secrets are traded in the ladies’ toilets out of the eardrop of us gentlemen but my female friends inform me that a lot of chat does go on there.
It certainly seems the case when watching the returning police drama Scott & Bailey whose opening scene features Amelia Bullmore’s DCI Gill Murray seeking guidance from her two colleagues about how to best deliver the speech she is about to give to the assembled TV cameras and local media.
Geeky Allison tells Tom about the werewolf videos being uploaded to the web
Puppy Love in a nutshell: Tom and Hal both score love interests, and we meet Allison, a debate champion-slash-werewolf who tracks down Tom to reveal that he’s a YouTube star. For all the wrong reasons. And just to keep Annie busy, she gets saddled with the ghost of a curmudgeonly old neighbour whom she helps pass over to the afterlife.
How perfect was Ellie Kendrick as uber-swot Allison? The geeky student finds Tom to tell him there’s a video of him changing into a werewolf on YouTube. There’s something charming in these two naive, awkward characters coming together, and there are a couple of brilliant sequences where Allison helps Tom sharpen his debate skills while Tom helps Allison be better with sharpened stakes.
We take a departure from our regularly scheduled Being Human story arc to resurrect a vulgar, annoying character called Adam and introduce his new floozy, a frumpy headmistress who just happens to be irresistible to men.
It was all going so well, too. The arc about the War Child and Tom discovering the burn on his arm, seemingly sealing the prophecy that he would kill baby Eve. And then someone decided to write a completely throwaway episode in which Adam returns with a middle aged woman amid an age-gap scandal.
It could well be that Alfie Kirby enters the Being Human history books tonight as the creepiest character ever to appear on the show. For those of you interested, he’s played tonight by James Lance channelling a fusion of Gok Wan and David Walliams with a hint of 1970′s Blue Peter presenter. And while that might seem cute and inoffensive, trust me it’s not.
Read on for our review and recap of Being Human’s A Spectre Calls…(P.S. that was a spoiler warning…)
So, the writers of Being Human anticipated that legions of you would be grumbling about the loss of most of the original cast and the introduction of Hal. As fans of the show, it must be reassuring to know that all those months ago, they wrote an episode focussing on that very issue.
Essentially, The Graveyard Shift takes a bit of time out from the grim Warchild story arc to develop the relationships between Annie, Hal and Tom. What are the essential ingredients in deepening the bond between the flatmates? Well, Being Human has effectively used flashbacks in the past to give us new insights into its characters. So, flashback to Hal’s bloody past. Check. Next throw in some bonding time where the housemates’ trust is challenged and they face a common enemy together. Oh, and some weird kinky ghost-vampire-memory-sex stuff with Ron Weasley’s dad.
Nina, George and Annie at the end of Being Human series 3
You know, this episode of Being Human could have gone horribly wrong. Not only had we lost Mitchell (Aidan Turner) at the end of Series 3, but our last vision of the Honolulu Heights housemates was George, Annie and Nina standing shoulder to shoulder against new vampire antagonist Wyndham.
By the time the opening credits rolled on the Series 4 premiere of Being Human, Wyndham was the shortest-lived baddie in vampire history and Nina had been brutally bludgeoned to death (off-screen). And by the time the episode ended George, the always wonderful Russell Tovey, had gone through his door to the afterlife.
Camelot’s under attack by dark magic, part #1,532. Morgana and Agrivaine have decided to stop playing “traitors in caves” and just go over the top. And so the two sneaky plotters who’ve been meeting in clandestine caves for the last 10 episodes suddenly have an army at their disposal.
We could stand around and moan all day about how quickly Morgana conquered Camelot, but what’s important is that Arthur’s kingdom is finally in proper peril. And with Morgana in the throne, Merlin has to help an injured Arthur to safety so that he can at least live to fight another day. Of course, in order to save Arthur, he must convince him to leave the castle. And in order to do that, Merlin has to use magic on him. Which ends up with Arthur being knocked absolutely senseless and relying on Merlin for his every cue.
Tonight’s episode of Merlin looked for all the world like it was about to become a bizarre racist storyline: putting Gwen’s brother Elyan at the centre of the episode, we saw him first being taunted by the other knights when he asked for a drink of water and then repeatedly being punched in the face as a way to subdue him when he became possessed by the spirit of a massacred child bent on revenge.
But of course, this is the BBC, so we’ll trust that none of that was intentional and move along with the review. Just an observation, okay?
I should start off by saying that this is my first Merlin review in quite some time. I’ve not had the opportunity to watch it much since X Factor went into overdrive, but tonight I caught up with the last few episodes.
I mention this because the two episodes which preceded Lamia showed substantial storyline development. The plot involving Morgana had moved ahead, to the point where she’d enchanted Merlin to kill Arthur, then in the next episode, Gaius was made to give up the secret of the old sorceror who’s actually Merlin in disguise. But what was most impressive about these episodes – for me - was how the cast seem to be much more settled in their roles this year.
One of these kids is not like the others...
Hey, no sooner does Doctor Who bow out than the Medieval equivalent of Harry Potter bounces back on our screens. That’s right, readers, Merlin is b-a-c-k!
As with last year’s series premiere, the tone of the show is incredibly dark, and sensibly they’ve titled the episode The Darkest Hour. We pick up with Morgana still doing evil things (although we can’t quite remember why – a recap clip would’ve helped enormously), King Uther morose after her betrayal, Arthur running the kingdom and a patently evil uncle who we’ve never seen before has crawled out of the woodwork.
So, that’s it wrapped up then. Doctor Who’s sixth series ends with The Wedding Of River Song and – of course – the non-death of The Doctor.
It’s at times like this that I’m reminded Steven Moffat once wrote some of the most clever, exciting episodes of Doctor Who. But that was when Russell T Davies was running the show. Now that Moffat’s at the helm, every time he writes a premiere or a finale episode, all hell breaks loose. It’s funny how his writing style has gone from being smart, edgy episodes to these strung-out overwhelmingly crammed episodes that feel like you’re standing in front of an ideas firehose. It’s like being bombarded by every zany sci-fi idea that popped into Moffat’s head while he was writing the episode.
And honestly, I think he needs an editor. Someone to rein in the craziness and concentrate on the quality of the episode.
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