Vampires and Werewolves and Ghosts, Oh My!

I hate Twilight. Actually, hate is too kind a word. I abhor, loathe, despise Twilight. And yes, I have read it and watched the movie. Both turned out to be even worse than I was expecting. But other people liked Twilight and publishers and authors and other sorts of culture creators noticed these other people that liked Twilight and began creating more of the same. Werewolves became cool by association and supernatural romances were for a while all that could be found on Young Adult bookshelves. Personally, this irritated me as I tend to like my supernatural creatures to be scary monsters rather than misunderstood superhumans.

So most of the supernatural wave I avoided. I had heard of Being Human but only because Aidan Turner, one of the stars of the show, was set to be Kili in The Hobbit. But a few weeks ago, season 1 of Being Human showed up at the library where I work. I was curious to see some of Aidan Turner’s work so I checked it out.

I loved it.

If you haven’t heard of the show, it’s a BBC production that will be entering its 5th season next year. I have only seen the first 2 seasons so far, which general consensus seems to claim are the best, and will be starting the 3rd season as soon as I can. The show follows Annie (Lenora Crichlow), a ghost; George (Russell Tovey), a werewolf; and Mitchell (Aidan Turner), a vampire. These three are housemates and friends and are desperately trying to, well, be human.

It can be a bit gruesome at times. We routinely see the bloodied victims of vampires with their throats ripped out and the werewolf transformation never got easier for me to watch.

But it was a surprisingly funny show. And very sweet. Despite their supernatural status, each of the three just want to live normal lives or as close to normal as they can. As the series progresses, enemies are introduced, some serious, some not. And new friends are made too, some that stick around and some that don’t.

Season 3 is the last with Aidan Turner as he left at the end of it for Hobbit work, but it has been an entertaining show so far and I’m glad I decided to watch it.
(There is an American version of this show (surprise surprise) but I have not seen it or even heard that much about it so I can’t say anything about it. Just the British one.)