Being Human (TV series)

For the Canadian/US adaptation, see Being Human (North American TV series).

Being Human
Being Human title card
Genre	Supernatural drama, horror, drama, comedy
Created by	Toby Whithouse
Starring	Current: Lenora Crichlow Russell Tovey Michael Socha Damien Molony Former: Aidan Turner Sinead Keenan
Composer(s)	Richard Wells
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	23 (as of 13 March 2011) (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Matthew Bouch
Location(s)	Series 1–2: Bristol Series 3-4: Barry
Cinematography	Tim Palmer (pilot) Nic Morris (series)
Running time	58 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC Three / BBC HD
Picture format	1080i 16:9 (HDTV)
External links
Website
Production website

Being Human is a British supernatural drama television series. It was created and written by Toby Whithouse and is currently broadcast on BBC Three. The show blends elements of flatshare comedy and horror drama. It originally starred Aidan Turner as Mitchell (a vampire), Russell Tovey as George (a werewolf) and Lenora Crichlow as Annie (a ghost)—all of whom are sharing accommodation and attempting as best as they can to live a "normal" life and blend in with the ordinary humans around them. During the show's second series, Sinead Keenan became part of the main cast. The first two series were set in in Totterdown, Bristol, and the third series relocated to Barry, Wales.

On 13 March 2011, series creator Toby Whithouse announced that Turner had left the show and that new characters would be introduced. On 11 November 2011, Russell Tovey announced that he was leaving Being Human after Series 4 to work full-time on his other show, Him & Her. Furthermore, Keenan announced on the 9th January 2012 that she had not filmed any scenes for Series 4, and would exit the show off-screen. Joining the cast of season four are Michael Socha, who featured in season three and has now been upgraded to a series regular as werewolf Tom and Damien Moloney as new vampire Hal.

The series is one of the most popular shows on BBC's iPlayer. The second series premiered on BBC Three on 10 January 2010. The third series premiered on 23 January 2011. The day following the series 3 finale, the BBC announced a fourth series would premiere on the BBC in 2012. Series 4 will commence airing on BBC Three on Sunday 5th February 2012. The American premiere will be on Saturday, February 25 at 9/8c on BBC America .

Plot

The central premise of Being Human is that various types of supernatural beings exist alongside human beings, with varying degrees of menace; that three of these supernatural beings are opting to live amongst human beings rather than apart from them; and that these three characters are attempting (as much as is possible) to live ordinary human lives despite the pressures and dangers of their situations. They are constantly threatened with exposure or persecution, with pressure from other supernatural creatures, and with problems caused by their attempts to deal with their own natures.

Series 1 (2009)

Series 1 is set in the regional British city of Bristol and introduces George (a reluctant werewolf in his mid-twenties) and Mitchell (a vampire with the appearance and behaviour of a young man in his mid-twenties, but who's actually over a hundred years old). Both are attempting to reject their current nature as supernatural predators — George by strictly managing his transformations and their effect on others, Mitchell by abstaining from blood-drinking. Despite a long history of antipathy between the werewolf and vampire races, Mitchell and George have formed a deep friendship: they have both taken low-profile, low-status jobs as hospital porters and live together as housemates. Moving into a new house together, they discover that it already has an occupant — Annie, the ghost of a young woman in her mid-twenties. Annie had previously lived in the house with her fiance Owen, but died after falling down the stairs. She has remained to haunt the property while Owen, unaware of her continued presence, has rented it out to Mitchell and George. As supernatural beings, both George and Mitchell can see, touch and communicate with Annie, who is delighted to have the company and becomes the third member of their surrogate family.

Russell Tovey, Lenora Crichlow and Aidan Turner in a promotional image from the show

All three, however, have ongoing problems to deal with. Mitchell is arguably under the most pressure: his first, and central, challenge is his struggle with his desire to feed (which is presented as being similar to a struggle against drug addiction). His second challenge relates directly to the first and is his recent creation of a reckless new vampire — Lauren, a date whom he attacked and drank from during a one-night stand in which he could not resist the temptation to feed. The third challenge is the growing pressure placed on him by the Bristol vampire community led by William Herrick (the vampire who'd originally "recruited" Mitchell during World War I). Herrick has imperial ambitions of leading a global vampire ascendancy, and has worked carefully on placing vampires undercover within the human establishment — he himself is a high-ranking police officer. He has now begun to recruit humans with valuable positions or careers (such as local government officials, lawyers and architects). Prior to giving up blood, Mitchell was seen as a hero figure by many in the vampire community, meaning that Herrick sees him both as a valuable ally not to be let go easily, and as a potential rival.

George's own challenge is to manage his monthly werewolf transformations in such a way that he does not kill anyone, nor pass on the werewolf syndrome. He considers his condition to be "a curse", over which he is in a certain state of denial (including referring to his wolf-self as if it were a different person). Finally, Annie's challenge is to deal with her new life as a ghost (including the isolation and loneliness which results) and to find out the reason why she has remained on Earth as a ghost instead of passing over to the afterlife.

The remainder of Series 1 deals with the protagonists' attempts to deal with these situations and with the various characters (human or otherwise) with whom they come into contact or conflict. All of the problems are finally brought to a ferocious climax which the trio survive, but with their existence no less precarious.

Series 2 (2010)

George in his werewolf form

Series 2 (also set in Bristol) deals with the aftermath of Series 1. Mitchell must struggle with the dual responsibilities of managing his own urges and attempting to manage the now scattered and rudderless Bristol vampire community. George must cope with the responsibilities of intimacy and the problem of having passed on his "curse" despite his best efforts. Annie must find a new purpose in her continued presence (having resolved the initial issues which kept her on Earth) and must also deal with the malignant attention of another type of supernatural being, resident in the afterlife but able to influence events in the world.

The lives of Mitchell, George and Annie are further complicated by other new factors. There is now a need to fit George's girlfriend Nina into the household, and deal with urgent new problems she is facing herself; there are problems with the police, and two powerful and playful vampires (Ivan and Daisy) have arrived in Bristol with the threat of causing mayhem. The trio are also subject to the growing attentions of a mysterious organization (possibly called the Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity, or CenSSA) led by the scientist Dr Jaggatt and the priest-administrator Kemp. This organization has identified and classified the three different types of supernatural creature – vampire, werewolf and ghost – and is continuing to research them, although it's evident from the start that they are quite prepared to let subjects die in the course of the research. The lives of each of the four main protagonists gradually draw them closer and closer to the organization, despite the threat it may pose to all of them.

Series 3 (2011)

Series 3 saw the protagonists move to Barry Island in South Wales (as the result of events in Series 2). They set up house in a former bed-and-breakfast hotel and attempt to resume their "normal" lives, despite the overhang of the results of the Series 2 climax. As Series 3 progresses, the quartet must deal with the return of various figures and events from George and Mitchell's past, more supernatural incursions (more vampires including a teenager and a pair of suburban swingers, a zombie WAG and a pair of werewolves (who have set themselves up as vampire hunters) and the complications of their own developing relationships. Events lead up to a finale which leaves the household changed dramatically. Aidan Turner left the show at the end of the third series.

Series 4 (2012)

On 13 March 2011, Whithouse and BBC Three announced that Being Human would return for a fourth series. Eight 60-minute episodes were commissioned.

The producer also said some old characters would return, and he intended to introduce new ones. Radio Times reported that the fourth series is likely to air in early 2012, and that the characters will continue to live on Barry Island. On April 19, 2011, BBC America announced it would co-produce the fourth series with BBC Three.

On 30 April 2011, actor Michael Socha, who plays the werewolf Tom, told the Derby Telegraph that he'd been asked by Toby Whithouse to appear in Series Four. On 26 May, actor Craig Roberts told British magazine SFX that his character will return to the show. Roberts, who plays the eternally teenaged vampire Adam, said, "I believe I am going back for an episode. They've not mentioned too much about Becoming Human. If that does get mentioned again I'm all for doing it because I thought it was a great thing." On July 22, the Warrington Guardian reported that 22-year-old Andrew Gower had been cast as Cutler, a vampire who will become one of the main characters on the show. South Wales actor Darren Evans will also appear on the show, although the nature of his character was not stated.

Lenora Crichlow, Michael Socha and Damien Molony with departing cast member Russell Tovey in an image from the show's retooled fourth series.

On October 16, 2011, SFX magazine revealed that Irish actor and 2011 Spotlight Prize nominee Damien Molony (a recent graduate of the Drama Centre London) had been cast as the new vampire Hal. Molony told the magazine in an interview that Hal is an upper-class, very English, well-dressed vampire for which the writers have laid out an extensive back-story. Molony also revealed that his character will fall in love. Series creator Toby Whithouse told the online version of magazine Digital Spy that the series would "have to re-establish...relatively soon in series four" the main concept of a vampire, werewolf, and ghost living in a home together, but declined to comment further on what the details of this might be. In an interview with the Web site CultBox, series star Russell Tovey said that Hal would be "the new head vampire."

Series star Russell Tovey denied rumors that his werewolf character George Sands might not appear in the entire series. In his CultBox interview, Tovey said that the plot lines were "very spread out", that "a lot more happens", and that a number of new main and recurring characters had been added to Series Four. "[T]he storyline is going completely crazy,..." he said. Dave Golder, writing for SFX magazine, concluded that Tovey's comments meant fans would see less of George and more of the new characters, and that Whithouse would be likely to reinvent the show with all these changes.

The filmmakers returned to Barry Island to film season four in late July 2011, where they continued to use local man Gary Rowe's house as the group's bed-and-breakfast base of operations. Students from the drama and theater programme at Coleg Gwent were used as extras and in minor roles on the show. Cast member Damien Molony said in mid-October 2011 that several scenes for the series' final episodes had already been filmed.

On 11 November 2011, Russell Tovey announced he was leaving the show during Series 4 and on January 13th 2012 the BBC's Being Human blog revealed Sinead Keenan would not be returning for Series 4.

Episodes and home video

Main article: List of Being Human episodes

Series	Episodes	Originally aired		DVD release date
		Series premiere	Series finale	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
Pilot	1	18 February 2008		N/A	N/A	N/A
1	6	25 January 2009	1 March 2009	20 July 2010	20 April 2009	6 August 2009
2	8	10 January 2010	28 February 2010	21 September 2010	12 April 2010	5 August 2010
3	8	23 January 2011	13 March 2011	3 May 2011	28 March 2011	5 May 2011
4	8	05 February 2012 (BBC Three) February 25, 2012 (BBC America)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

In October 2011, Netflix announced it had obtained rights to stream episodes of Being Human via its home video service in the United States.

Production

Characters

Main article: List of Being Human characters

Background

Creator Toby Whithouse was approached by production company Touchpaper Television to develop a drama series about a group of friends who buy a house together. Whithouse was not enthusiastic about the idea but came up with three characters, George, Mitchell and Annie. Touchpaper Television liked the characters so they started developing the project. For months Whithouse and Touchpaper Television struggled to come up with a storyline for the first episode. Eventually they had a final meeting to see if they could come up with a storyline or the project would be scrapped. Whithouse came up with the supernatural elements and the characters were changed.

Pilot episode

Promotional image from the pilot.

Whithouse was contacted by the BBC who told him they were making a series of pilots. Whithouse was not a fan of the television pilot process but believed otherwise the show would never get made so the pilot script was submitted. In 2007, Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC Three, commissioned the pilot of Being Human, West 10 LDN, Mrs In-Betweeny, and Phoo Action pilots as part of the rebranding of BBC Three. Before the pilots were broadcast, Whithouse was told that only Phoo Action would be commissioned for a series. The pilot episode was broadcast on 18 February 2008. The journalist Narin Bahar of the Reading Chronicle started an online petition to lobby BBC Three commissioning editors to greenlight a full series which was signed by over 3000 people. Phoo Action was cancelled after it was decided that the scripts for the series were not good enough and Being Human was then commissioned.

Casting

The pilot episode starred Guy Flanagan as Mitchell the vampire, Andrea Riseborough as Annie the ghost, and Russell Tovey as George the werewolf, as well as featuring Adrian Lester as Herrick (the vampire leader and main antagonist of Series One) and Dominique McElligott as the recent vampire convert Lauren (converted by Mitchell). With the exception of George, these parts were recast when the series went into full production.

Filming

Lighting trucks at Being Human film shoot, College Green, Bristol

The first and second series were set and filmed in Bristol featuring views of Clifton Suspension Bridge and Clifton Village. Windsor Terrace, Totterdown, Bristol, was the location of Mitchell, Annie, and George's home and the pub shown in the pilot. Scenes set at the hospital where Mitchell and George work were filmed in and around Bristol General Hospital and Glenside, Bristol.

The third series was filmed and set in Barry (Barry Island). The new house is located on Cannon Street. Some filming took place in Hensol Woods near Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, in July 2010. The move to Barry Island and Wales was prompted by the BBC's "Out of London" project, which seeks to move productions away from London and to new production facilities in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Some interior filming occurred at an abandoned bus depot which had been converted into a film studio.

Reception

The pilot episode was not widely reviewed, and some reviews were not necessarily positive. A review in the Daily Telegraph called the pilot one of BBC Three's "wildly uneven" new shows. Brian McIver, writing for the Daily Record felt the show lacked sex appeal and that the plot was boring, and concluded: "so what?" But by late January 2009, the Daily Record reported that most of the reviews of the pilot had raved about the new show. Viewership for the pilot was very high, and a massive online petition drive helped turn the pilot into a series.

Reception of the series has been extremely favourable. Stephen Armstrong in The Guardian gave the show a warm review, noting that its primary appeal was not supernatural or horror. It was, he wrote, "a curious genre mash-up drama about a ghost, werewolf and vampire sharing a flat in Bristol, which deals more with the horror of living in modern Britain than the horror of the undead." David Belcher writing in the Glasgow Herald was effusive, however, calling the series "Easily the sole good programme on BBC3... Being Human: the supernatural drama that's super in its depiction of human nature. At the conclusion of the first season, Andrea Mullaney of The Scotsman had high praise for the show's premise and writing:

The series started well and seemed to get better almost every week. By last night's conclusion, it had matured into a marvellously enjoyable and surprisingly affecting show, which turned its punchline of a premise into a metaphor for everyday struggles to make connections, overcome their selfishness and insecurities and to live a decent life. ... Remarkably un-clichéd and well written by Toby Whithouse, this was hugely better than most other British attempts at genre shows — the ropey Torchwood, the dreadful Demons and even most recent episodes of Doctor Who.

When it debuted on BBC America in 2009, the show won similar plaudits. The Miami Herald's Glenn Garvin praised the show's balance of humor and pathos: "What it is is darkly funny, deeply affecting and utterly cockeyed, a work that celebrates life by dwelling on death, love by abiding loneliness. It's a tale of cold, dead noses pressed up against the window pane of humanity. ... But for all the laughs, Being Human never loses sight of the menace of its characters." Writing in the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley called the series "compelling" and praised its equal emphasis on horror, remorse, and humor:

Three young friends share a shabby apartment in Bristol, England, as well as secrets, and those sound like the set-up to a corny joke — a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf walk into a bar. Only in this case the bar is a pub and there is no punch line. Being Human takes the killing — and the perpetrators' anguished remorse — seriously, but still manages to find the humor in their predicament as these monsters in human form struggle to blend into normal, almost Seinfeldian life that includes work, going out on dates and having the tedious neighbors over for drinks. ... All three characters are highly appealing, but the charm of the show lies in the delicate balance of engrossing drama and disarming humor; the series is not campy or self-conscious, it's witty in an offhand, understated way.

Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Mary McNamara lauded the show's humor, but emphasized its moral seriousness and metaphorical nature. "[D]espite more than a few laugh-out-loud moments, Being Human is no sitcom, no Will & Grace with monsters," she wrote. "Creator Toby Whithouse takes all the themes associated with the cursed and the damned very seriously, and if his exploration of them is less baroque than other franchises, it promises to be even more effective. Addiction is the obvious comparison, and Whithouse makes it nicely — the relationship between John and Lauren (Annabel Scholey), the woman he hopes is his last victim, plays like classic junkie love."

The praise has continued throughout the series' run. Matt Roush from TV Guide, having given critical plaudits to the third season, said of the series: "Can't recommend it highly enough." Reviewing the Series 3 Blu-ray release, the Wichita Falls Times-Record-News noted: "So many movies and TV programs will suggest how evil people can be and how much characters can suffer. Being Human actually can make viewers feel something of that horror and awfulness." Melinda Houston, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, applauded the way the show took the common television theme of the "disenfranchised...suddenly retaliat[ing]" and inverted it. "Moving beyond the teen tropes, it sets itself squarely in a mire of 20-something Gen Y angst. Being special and having power has no upside; being different is a burden and a nuisance and all anyone wants is a life of ordinariness."

The show's success, Matt Patchett of The Yorker said, helped pave the way for other British supernatural shows, such as The Fades.

Awards

The show was nominated for Best Drama Series at the 2010 British Academy Television Awards, but lost to Misfits. It was nominated for the same award again in 2011, but lost to Sherlock.

Being Human was crowned Best Drama Series at the 2011 TV Choice Awards.

Ratings and social media

Being Human garnered "some of the largest audiences in the network's history" when it debuted on BBC America in 2009, and again during its second season run in 2010.

In March 2011, the BBC announced that live, delayed, and online viewership for the premier of Being Human's third season was 1.8 million viewers, the largest viewing audience for a season premier in BBC Three history. The average viewership per episode in Season 3 was 1.4 million viewers on television and another 400,000 viewers via the show's release on iPlayer. The network also revealed that Becoming Human's finale, which aired on BBC Three rather than online, received more than 1.5 million viewers on television and iPlayer.

In August 2011, the BBC's Director of Television, George Entwistle, revealed that Being Human had 330,000 Facebook fans, compared to 2.3 million for the Facebook pages of EastEnders and 220,000 for Springwatch. Two months later, the Web site InsideSocialGames.com reported that Utinni Games is developing a social network game based on the show, in which players can create their own character and participate in an extensive, constantly evoling storyline set in the show's universe.

Spin-offs and adaptations

North American adaptation

Main article: Being Human (North American TV series)

A remake of the series produced by Muse Entertainment Enterprises aired on Space in Canada and Syfy in the U.S. in 2011. The first season was 13 episodes. A second season premiered January 16, 2012..

Becoming Human

Main article: Becoming Human

The BBC commissioned an online extension called Becoming Human, which was launched midway through the transmission of the third series. Becoming Human stars Craig Roberts as teenage vampire Adam, Leila Mimmack as werewolf Christa, and Josh Brown as ghost Matt, the three working together to solve Matt's recent murder.

Books

In 2010, BBC Books published the first set of Being Human books, set at some time during Series 2.

#	Title	Author	Published	ISBN
01	The Road	Simon Guerrier	4 February 2010	ISBN 9781846078989
02	Chasers	Mark Michalowski	4 February 2010	ISBN 9781846078996
03	Bad Blood	James Goss	4 February 2010	ISBN 9781846079009

External links

• Being Human at BBC Online
• Official press pack at BBC Press Office
• Official Website
• Being Human at TV.com
• Being Human at the Internet Movie Database