TV Review: Being Human on the BBC

SPOILERS: sort of…

What happens when you take an overly sensitive vampire, a high-strung, socially awkward werewolf, and an annoyingly bubbly ghost that borders on OCD, and make them all flat mates? You get perhaps one of the most refreshing shows to hit the BBC and Netflix since the IT Crowd.

Being Human is all about dramedy. The writers do a fantastic job of blending comedy with the drama of the supernatural trying to discover their humanity again. They also manage to insert believable elements of action into the story in small and appropriate doses. One of my concerns near the end of the first season, as things were building to this big conflict, was that the human formed werewolf and ghost would suddenly start kicking butt, thankfully that didn’t quite happen…just watch the show to find out what I’m talking about.

I’ll be honest, I’ve tried to watch shows like True Blood and have considered trying the Twilight movies just to see what the hype is. I still don’t like it despite giving it a couple chances. My wife digs it for some inexplicable reason (I think it has to do with her crush on Gambit from the X-men comics) and now that we’ve found Being Human I’m glad we have a show we can watch together that doesn’t make me want to rub grain alcohol into my eyes.

The only vampire movies I can say I liked were Interview, the Underworld series, and Daybreakers. So I was highly skeptical of Being Human going into watching it. I gave my wife the benefit of the doubt because she had turned me on to Luther, another great BBC production about a brilliant cop on the fringe. I was pleasantly surprised. There is the typical vampire world domination backdrop, but the show really shines in the interspersing of goofy humor and great emotional stress.

Now in case you’re concerned, the humor presented in the show isn’t the traditional slapstick goofball humor many people think of from Monty Python and other BBC shows of days gone by. No, the BBC has been putting out some high quality materials for our viewing enjoyment. Being Human is at the very least on par with some other great shows out there, and at best, far better than most. The only bummer is that in typical British show fashion, the seasons are only six episodes, but thankfully there are three seasons available on the old Netflix.

So if you’re looking for something new to check out and have at least a passing interest in things supernatural, go give Being Human a shot. Just note that this is the BBC version we’re talking about here, not the “yet another American remake of a British show because we can’t come up with original ideas or think we can do it better with a bigger budget in a higher priced production market” attempt being made by SyFy.