Being Human: Season Three

Of the Season Two finale of Being Human, I wrote that it “sets up a third season that will either be brilliant or a disaster.” Well, I’m both sad and happy to report that it is neither. Much happened in the last two episodes of the second season – the Box Tunnel massacre led by Mitchell (Aidan Turner), the resurrection of Herrick (Jason Watkins), and most importantly, Annie (Lenora Crichlow) being forced to go through the door into Purgatory, and Mitchell vowing to retrieve her. All of these elements play heavily into Season Three to varying degrees of success.

Now, Mitchell’s trip to Purgatory sure seemed like it would make for great television and the series wastes no time getting him there. It turns out to be nothing more than a drab house full of strange rooms that recall moments of Mitchell’s checkered past, and a slightly annoying woman called Lia (Lacey Turner), who foretells that the vampire will be killed by a “wolf-shaped bullet.” Oh, and she also happens to be the ghost of one of Mitchell’s Box Tunnel victims. When he finally finds Annie, it doesn’t take much to get her back to the corporeal world, and given how bland Purgatory was, one wonders what all of her fuss was about in the first place. Based on the images we saw of her screaming through the TV, you’d have thought she was burning in Hell.

Meanwhile, back in Wales (yes, Wales – the group has moved from Bristol into an empty Welsh B & B), George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) appear to be doing just fine, and dealing with the complexities of being a werewolf couple without too much trouble. Until the full moon comes along, that is, and they end up in the same cell together for the night, and the werewolves get jiggy, and next thing you know, Nina is preggers. Perhaps their baby will come out looking like Eddie Munster, but that may be asking too much. And it would be too much, but not outside the realm of possibility, because if there’s one problem with the first few episodes of Season Three, it’s that the show appears to have lost its fine balance of horror and humor.

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Being Human: Season Two

Now that’s more like it. I’m referring, of course, to the sophomore season of Being Human. Of its freshman season I wrote, “It doesn’t always reach as far it feels it potentially could” and “it’d probably be best to cut Being Human a little slack at this early stage of the game.” With its setup out of the way, the series is now taking long, deep breaths, and exhaling a fantastically entertaining combination of humor, horror and drama. This is where the series really begins.

With vampire leader Herrick dispatched (thank you, George), it has fallen on Mitchell (Aidan Turner) to begrudgingly lead the vampires, and so he chooses to do so with leading by example: No blood-sucking; he even manages to bring a sort of AA model to the group. He also finds himself smitten with a doctor from the hospital, Lucy (Lyndsey Marshall). George (Russell Tovey) has accidentally turned his girlfriend, Nina (Sinead Keenan), into a werewolf as well, which doesn’t exactly bode well for their blossoming relationship. And Annie (Lenora Crichlow) has found a way to go corporeal, and as a result takes a job at a pub and finds a romance (or two) that can’t possibly end well.

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A chat with Lenora Crichlow of Being Human

The lovely Lenora Crichlow is mostly unknown to U.S. audiences, unless of course you’re a fan of the BBC America series Being Human (Saturdays at 9PM). Crichlow plays one third of a trio of roommates comprised of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. The striking actress [dis]embodies the latter - the spirit of Annie Sawyer, doomed to an afterlife of making tea and wearing the same eternal grey outfit. And yet in Crichlow’s performance there’s hope for something better, as Annie tries to make it in a world she shouldn’t even exist in, alongside her two best friends. Lenora took time out in between shooting Season Three and heading off to Comic-Con to talk to Bullz-Eye about what sets Being Human apart from other supernatural fare, the ongoing progression of the concept, and her phantasmagorical Uggs.

Lenora Crichlow: The thing is, Being Human does just what it says on the cover. In most of these vampire shows and werewolf shows – supernatural shows in general – there’s some kind of, at the essence of the show, a real celebration of their supernatural selves. The vampires and the werewolves are really glorified (although I haven’t seen Twilight) and I think Being Human’s stance is struck so differently because it actually comes from a place where the ultimate for these characters would be to be human again. Every single supernatural issue that comes up can quickly lead back to something within the human condition. Even though it is a supernatural show, it just gives the whole thing layers. The characters of Annie, George and Mitchell were originally written without being a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire, so the characters are very fully developed. It has a huge amount of comedy in it, it has amounts of angst, mystery and drama, but at the heart of the show I think you’ve got three very well-rounded human characters, which is something that whether you’re into sci-fi or not you can tap into and relate to. I love the show and I love being in the show and I think as an actress it certainly gives me a lot more to play with when I can bring everything I play with Annie right back home and right back down to earth, and you know, sort of grounded in some sense of reality. I don’t know how good I’d be at being too much out there. As fun as it is, it really does ground the show – the fact that they’re all trying to be human. That’s the show’s selling point and uniqueness.

The above is an excerpt from a much longer interview I did with Lenora. Read the entire piece by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Being Human: Season One

A TV series that in a one sentence pitch can be most easily described as “a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all live together in the same house” must surely be a comedy, right? Well yes, and no. Being Human certainly has comedic elements, but they’re rarely of the “yuk-yuk” variety. It is in fact difficult to pigeonhole the series with a label. Is it horror? Comedy? Drama? It’s all those and probably more. And lest you think it’s schizophrenic in its presentation, that’s hardly the case. Being Human juggles all of these labels so efficiently that it probably deserves a new category all its own.

Now this isn’t to imply that Being Human is a work of pure genius, just that it’s adept in its mission. A massive stumbling block for me, that may afflict plenty a potential viewer, comes from the vampire and werewolf angles. Straight up – I am utterly sick to death of vampires and werewolves. Between True Blood and Twilight alone, you can’t turn on your TV, go to the multiplex, or even log onto Facebook without being inundated by both fang and full moon. Where were all these people when I stood proud and alone at the age of 10 in the school playground, boldly proclaiming my admiration for Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., only to be heckled by my peers? Must these concepts be littered with ample doses of sex and romance in order to attract the masses? Apparently so. Being Human uses a bit of that as well, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from a series featuring vampires and werewolves, and its primary focus is instead on the building blocks of an unlikely kinship between its three protagonists.

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.