Everyone wants to fit in. Humans are social creatures, and we like to feel that we’re welcome among others of our kind, that we belong. Nobody likes to feel excluded, on the edge of society, an outcast. Such is the premise of Being Human, the BBC comic drama about three roommates that really don’t fit into any human clique. Why? They’re a vampire, werewolf and ghost.
Like a certain movie franchise that’s all the rage, these characters are desperate to integrate themselves into our world. Mitchell (Aidan Turner, The Tudors) is a 120-year-old vampire who has quit sucking blood cold turkey after a date with a female friend ended, well, badly. He works in a hospital alongside roomie George (Russell Tovey, The History Boys), who barks and yowls at the moon once a month. Annie (Lenora Crichlow, Sugar Rush) stays back at the flat. After all, she’s a ghost and is confined to the place where she died.
Being Human is a fun cocktail of gurgling-blood horror, sex, sci-fi, drama and supernatural, something very different from what the BBC originally asked for from executive producer Rob Pursey (City of Vice), Toby Whithouse (Torchwood, Doctor Who) and producer Matthew Bouch (The Sarah Jane Adventures). Pursey, on the line from London where Series 3 of Being Human is in production, recalled that the network wanted a project about three friends who were living together. The creative team concocted a trio of true-to-life characters who, they realized, had personality traits that could be mirrored in the supernatural.
“One was struggling with addiction, one had anger management problems and the girl had problems being noticed,” Pursey relates on his mobile phone. “They became fully realized once we said ‘Hey, George is like a werewolf!’ That’s how it evolved. It was a character-based piece first and evolved into its supernatural form.”
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The six-part first season will be broadcast this week on Space (two back to back episodes starting Monday at 9 p.m. and subsequent single instalments Tuesday to Friday at 9); storylines include George running amok through a park under a full moon, searching desperately for a quiet place to endure what Annie dubs “his time of the month” and running into late-night picnickers and a couple making out. Annie is troubled when he ex-boyfriend returns to the flat for the first time since she died, and Mitchell fights desperately not to succumb to his need for blood.
The stunt programming in August serves as an appetizer to the six-episode Series 2, which debuts in October on Space. |
Then, in winter 2011 comes a North American version of Being Human. Currently in production in Montreal, the SyFy produced series (Space has broadcast rights) stars Battlestar Galactica’s Sam Witwer as Aidan, La Belle Province’s Meaghan Rath (18 to Life) as Molly the ghost and Sam Huntington (Caveman) portraying Josh the werewolf. Lost and Supernatural alum Mark Pellegrino signed on as Bishop, a devious vampire mentor to Aidan.
Pursey is co-producing the project from across the pond via email and digital files along with husband and wife team Jeremy Carver (Supernatural) and Anna Fricke (Dawson’s Creek, Everwood). The biggest adjustment Pursey has made in repurposing the project for North America is that more characters and plotlines need to be written to fill the debut season’s 13 episodes. Rather than just take Series 1 and 2 and mash them together, Pursey encouraged his North American creative team to come up with original ideas on their own.
“They will give you a more inspired result than merely being asked to merely translate existing stuff,” he stresses. That literal translation, Pursey thinks, is why several British shows (Coupling, Life on Mars, The Eleventh Hour and Worst Week) that have tried to make a go of it through a North American remake have failed.
“You give the writers the space to create something that excites them,” he explains. “I was keen that they not just copy what we’d already done. If they were able to grasp what was essential and at the heart of it they would be able to create the new material with that heart intact.”
With production just literally underway in Montreal, Pursey has yet to see any footage of Being Human, but he knows the tone and pacing will be a bit different than its Commonwealth compatriot.
At its core, however, it will remain the same.
“We’re telling human stories about experiences that everyone’s had,” he intones with a chuckle. “Everyone’s felt like an outsider. All they want to be is like us; human. We know what it’s like to be excluded and on the margin for various reasons and we know what it’s like to overcome that.”
Being Human airs Monday, Aug. 23 to Friday, Aug. 27 at 9 p.m. ET on Space.
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Video: BBC promo for Being Human
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