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Being Human
Remember that pilot that was on BBC a year ago, the one about the vampire, the werewolf and the ghost living together in a house?
I was really looking forward to see this one made into a show, then for a little while not so thrilled when I heard that they had exchanged the actor playing Mitchell (the vampire), since I really loved Guy Flannagan in the role (who could possibly not love a skinny vampire that irons?) but as it turns out the new actor is pretty ok too and the replacement actress for Annie (the ghost) is imho even better than the original one.
The pilot was good, but there was a lot of room for improvement and the actual show is proving to be a lot better. It's getting more fun with every episode. What makes the show so interesting to me, asside from some truly brilliant lines and the fact that I could connect to the characters from the first second is that it is really doing it's own thing. It's a supernatural show that is almost solely character driven. There is no murder mystery of the week, the characters are not even heroes in the sense that would feel competent enough to run around saving people or hunting down bad guys (not on a regular basis at least). They just live with there weird conditions, sometimes better, sometimes worse. They're neither completely good or evil and thus more human then most tv characters.
The show makes me laugh and awww, and squee and that after only a few episodes. As far as vampire shows go it doesn't compare to Buffy, because nothing ever will, but it outdoes Moonlight and True Blood in a heartbeat. Of course the budget is much smaller and there aren't any cool special effects but both the writing and the actors make up for it twice. Only bad thing is that the season only has six much to short episodes, but hopefully it'll come back next year.
I really like where they are going with the characters. George is adorkable from the first episode on and while Annie is a little too emotional for my liking, I'm looking forward to her going all banshee on Owen. Mitchell as the vampire trying to be nonhomicidal gets me thinking the most, since I've seen that story so often already, but still never quite like that. Mitchell seems to be genuinely nice person, someone who's good with girls, kids and people in general, someone who is not made at all to sit in a corner brooding about his sins, but at some point his vampire condition always catches up with him. Unlike on other shows the hunger for blood is not driving him completely insane or out of control and also there's not an easy morally acceptable alternative to human blood like pigs blood or true blood in the being human verse. Going without blood for months doesn't kill him, or make him horribly weak, he just wants the blood and at some point he falls pack into the pattern and adds one more kill to his list. What's one more after all, when he's already guilty of so many murders. And you can always turn them. and then be completely incapable of taking care of your vampiric offspring. What makes it so mean is that he isn't faced with apocalyptic moral dilemmas, just his own private ones and sometimes he's just that little bit to weak to do the right thing and then overwhelmed by the consequences. He turned the kid from the last episode, because he couldn't bear seeing him dead and the mother grieving, but it makes him return to the company of the vampires that embrace it as their nature to be killers, which makes sense, because how could he pretend to be human, when he just turned a kid into a bloodthirsty monster. What's also interesting is that Mitchell doesn't have any of that killing-the-evildoer-thing going (after all he's not even going after Owen). It's even hard to imagine him to be a person who would judge others, when he's such a mess himself. Actually that makes much more sense for someone feeling guilty, than deciding what's good and what's evil for everyone else.
I wonder what he's going to be like, when he tries to run with the vamp crowd again, because I can't really see him fit in there either.
btw. I really need a Being human icon, does anyone know a good place to look for one?
I was really looking forward to see this one made into a show, then for a little while not so thrilled when I heard that they had exchanged the actor playing Mitchell (the vampire), since I really loved Guy Flannagan in the role (who could possibly not love a skinny vampire that irons?) but as it turns out the new actor is pretty ok too and the replacement actress for Annie (the ghost) is imho even better than the original one.
The pilot was good, but there was a lot of room for improvement and the actual show is proving to be a lot better. It's getting more fun with every episode. What makes the show so interesting to me, asside from some truly brilliant lines and the fact that I could connect to the characters from the first second is that it is really doing it's own thing. It's a supernatural show that is almost solely character driven. There is no murder mystery of the week, the characters are not even heroes in the sense that would feel competent enough to run around saving people or hunting down bad guys (not on a regular basis at least). They just live with there weird conditions, sometimes better, sometimes worse. They're neither completely good or evil and thus more human then most tv characters.
The show makes me laugh and awww, and squee and that after only a few episodes. As far as vampire shows go it doesn't compare to Buffy, because nothing ever will, but it outdoes Moonlight and True Blood in a heartbeat. Of course the budget is much smaller and there aren't any cool special effects but both the writing and the actors make up for it twice. Only bad thing is that the season only has six much to short episodes, but hopefully it'll come back next year.
I really like where they are going with the characters. George is adorkable from the first episode on and while Annie is a little too emotional for my liking, I'm looking forward to her going all banshee on Owen. Mitchell as the vampire trying to be nonhomicidal gets me thinking the most, since I've seen that story so often already, but still never quite like that. Mitchell seems to be genuinely nice person, someone who's good with girls, kids and people in general, someone who is not made at all to sit in a corner brooding about his sins, but at some point his vampire condition always catches up with him. Unlike on other shows the hunger for blood is not driving him completely insane or out of control and also there's not an easy morally acceptable alternative to human blood like pigs blood or true blood in the being human verse. Going without blood for months doesn't kill him, or make him horribly weak, he just wants the blood and at some point he falls pack into the pattern and adds one more kill to his list. What's one more after all, when he's already guilty of so many murders. And you can always turn them. and then be completely incapable of taking care of your vampiric offspring. What makes it so mean is that he isn't faced with apocalyptic moral dilemmas, just his own private ones and sometimes he's just that little bit to weak to do the right thing and then overwhelmed by the consequences. He turned the kid from the last episode, because he couldn't bear seeing him dead and the mother grieving, but it makes him return to the company of the vampires that embrace it as their nature to be killers, which makes sense, because how could he pretend to be human, when he just turned a kid into a bloodthirsty monster. What's also interesting is that Mitchell doesn't have any of that killing-the-evildoer-thing going (after all he's not even going after Owen). It's even hard to imagine him to be a person who would judge others, when he's such a mess himself. Actually that makes much more sense for someone feeling guilty, than deciding what's good and what's evil for everyone else.
I wonder what he's going to be like, when he tries to run with the vamp crowd again, because I can't really see him fit in there either.
btw. I really need a Being human icon, does anyone know a good place to look for one?