Being Human (US Version) 101 There Goes the Neighborhood I Review

Today I’m going to take a look at the new SyFy show Being Human. Once again this is semi-live blogging meaning I’m watching it live and doing this blog – yet I’m doing it off of a prerecorded thing – hey, I’ve had only a little sleep and it makes sense to me. Before I start I want to say a few things. This isn’t an original series, it’s the American version of a UK show that has been around for a while – and honestly I’ve wanted to watch the original British incarnation for a while I just haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. The premise of the show kind of strikes me as Three’s Company meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s simple: a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire live together and try to exist in the normal world.

I’m going to try to have an open mind about this but I know it will have two major drawbacks for me. The first being the most obvious; they can show/do/say much more in the UK version than they can on SyFy and I’m more than a little worried about how that translates. Are they going to find a seamless way to work around it, or will this end up being like when a basic cable network tries to air a show like The Sopranos on their network and end up having to edit out so much it’s basically a thirty minute show?  My other problem is with the casting Meghan Rath plays Sally and I’ll be more than willing to give her a chance after all she was one of the best things to have come out of the short lived series The Assistants (Brittney Irvin was also good but she’ll always be Courtney Whitmore/Stargirl to me); Sam Huntington plays Josh and I’m willing to give him a chance too, I like the things I’ve seen him in and I’ve been meaning to watch Fanboys for a while now. Mark Pellegrino plays Bishop and I think he’s going to play a pretty big part in the series so I’m glad I like him from his work on Supernatural – he played Jacob in Lost too but I had pulled away from the series before he was really in it. My biggest, and I guess only problem with the casting is Sam Witwer. I’m sure he’s a nice guy but his stint on Smallville as Davis Bloome/Doomsday made me absolutely detest the man. Seriously, I dislike him about a thousand times more than Kristen Kreuk and words cannot express how I feel about that woman.

Alright, now it’s time for the show.

Well I’m a little into it and so far the most disturbing this has been seeing Josh all bloody and wearing a dress. That was just disturbing. Also I don’t now if this is just me or not but every time the camera focuses on Aidan Sam is making that annoying duck face thing with his mouth that you always see on everyone’s myspace profile picture. It’s kind of annoying.

When Aidan and Marcus are arguing I find it really hard to believe that no one on that floor in the hospital managed to hear the crash from when Aidan was thrown up against the wall. I mean if you hit the wall hard enough for parts of it to fall off I’m sure someone would come running – especially in a hospital when it would be easy to assume that it was the sound of a patient falling on the ground.

I actually like how Josh and Aidan play off of each other so at least it makes at least half of the scenes with Sam in it easier for me to watch. Anyway I really wish that they would have done a little bit more to show how they met up, how Josh became a werewolf, how the two of them learned their secrets. I mean I know that they can’t show the creation of every connection the characters have but Sally had more of an introduction. Speaking of Sally I like that she’s pretty much a sarcastic jackass. I did find two things really funny so far: 1^st Aidan and his bad credit, and 2^nd the fact that when Josh sees Sally for the first time his instinct is to grab a slotted spoon – he lives with a vampire and is a werewolf yet he grabs a spoon? Yeah I’m really digging Sally and Josh’s freak out over it the two of them have pretty fantastic chemistry. And we have yet another character that makes Aidan passable. Well.. I knew PBS had to be good for something.

I get that they need to establish all this internal turmoil and make Aidan this big tragic hero type person but is it really necessary to flashback to events that happened in the first episode not even 20 minutes ago? And we have yet more duck face – I think I should make a drinking game out of it. So Bishop is a cop – so I take it between vampires working as cops and Aidan working at the hospital that this has the potential to turn into one of those conspiracy shows where this evil supernatural race no one knew exists is actually behind the scenes in everything running the show. If they do it correctly it could be interesting.

I don’t know if I like Josh’s sister, I think I need to see more of where her storyline goes in order for me to know for sure what to think about her. I’m glad we saw some flashbacks to Aidan and Bishop feeding on that wedding party it gives away a nice piece of the backstory here but leaves a lot open to interpretation. Is the reason Aidan plays nice now because he fed off of that kid, did he see Bishop feed from that kid – what happened there.

Things ended with a pretty good cliffhanger. Aidan at some bar feeding off of a willing girl, Josh locked in the basement with his sister about to transform and possibly kill or eat her. And Sally desperately trying to leave the house to reach Josh to save them both. It was a pretty good episode, it could have benefited more from a two hour premiere but there aren’t any more real complaints. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. My only fear now is that I’ve started out with the US version that whenever I do get around to having enough time to watch the original UK version that it will feel like that’s the rip off  instead of the other way around.

Before I leave I felt this wouldn't be a proper review unless I present to you.... vampire duck face!

Rating: A