The Cutprice Guignol

In the mid-to-late noughties, there was a glut of genre TV making waves on the small screen – from Doctor Who to True Blood to Primeval (or, at least, I keep telling myself that I’m not the only one who watched that show). And one of those shows – one that I realised only this week that I unaccountably hadn’t bent your proverbial blogging ear about yet – was Being Human.

Being Human, which ran between 2008-2013, was created by Toby Whithouse, who I know best from his work on Doctor Who, including his script for the all-timer Matt Smith episode The God Complex. And Being Human, as they go, was a pretty damn impressive start to Whitehouse’s foray into his own genre fiction show; it earned five seasons, a spin-off (Becoming Human), and a respectable American remake in 2011. It’s a goofy premise that sounds like it would lend itself more to a sitcom than any kind of serious drama – a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire end up as roommates in Bristol as they try to navigate the strange underbelly of supernatural society – but, even though it has a sly sense of humour, it still stands today as an oddly compelling example of modern genre fiction done right.

It was a star-making show, in a lot of ways – Aidan Turner, who plays the vampire Mitchell, rose to his current smouldering sex symbol status through this role, and Russel Tovey as the impossible endearing and Eeyorish werewolf George carved out a niche outside the purgatory of five-episode guest-starring arcs in Gavin & Stacey via Being Human. Leonora Crichlow, who plays Annie, the ghost, was already a star, at least to me, because of her starring role in iconic lesbian dramedy Sugar Rush, though I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who remembers it. While it certainly trails off a bit towards the end of its run, with Tovey and Turner moving on to other projects to be replaced by a perfectly-serviceable but unfortunately less compelling new cast in season four, I still have a lot of time for this show. Especially the way they handled werewolf transformation, which is, for me, one of the coolest approaches to the trope I’ve ever seen. Look, here it is now:

Being Human, as the title might suggest, is more about the place of the supernatural outsiders in society than it is about their inherent paranormal nature – but Whithouse really gets his teeth into (if you’ll excuse the pun) the metaphors at the hearts of these classic horror villains. Broadly, the show is about that feeling of distance from the rest of the world, of isolation due to some inherent part of yourself that you can’t exorcise (I am going to stop apologizing for the puns now, because frankly, they’re excellent). All of them exists on the outskirts of society, from Mitchell’s late shifts at the hospital to acquire blood, to Annie’s virtual imprisonment in the house she died in due to her own denial about her death, to George’s need to sequester himself during his periods of change. But more specifically, Whithouse uses each character and their affliction to explore their respective isolation and how it parallels real life – and does it, at least to my mind, to great effect.

Turner’s Mitchell could so easily have dipped into brooding, boring leading man syndrome, but instead, major aspects of his plot revolve around an addiction metaphor as he helps his most recently-turned chomp-ee manage her bloodlust and keep from succumbing to the desires that will lead her to hurt those around her, contending with the harm he’s done over the course of his long life in the seasons that follow. Annie slowly comes to terms with the abusive relationship that eventually led to her death over the course of the first season, and slowly opens up over the course of the show to relationships both platonic and romantic with those around her after the violence she suffered at the hands of her one-time fiancé. And George, as he tries to protect those he cares about from his transformation, isolates himself from most of the people in his life pre-transformation, convinced that his own affliction is too much for them to handle, a distinctly familiar mindset for anyone whose dealt with depression or other serious mental health concerns. Whithouse handles the supernatural in the way it works best, at least for me – exploring how it overlaps with the real world, and how those paranormal afflictions serve as heightened places to explore humanity and how we connect ourselves to it or deny ourselves of it entirely.

Nearly twenty years after it first came out, Being Human is still one of the better paranormal-focused offerings to come from British television – a deft, dark, and decidedly human approach to the supernatural with some great performances and a clear passion for the genres at play here. I’d love to know what you thought of it – if you’re an American reader, did you encounter the US version of the series, and if so, how does it stack up? Let me know in the comments!

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(header image via Flick)