Being Human – Street View

So now that Google Maps has implemented Street View in the UK, I thought I’d put together a few links to show places featured in Being Human. In no particular order:

• Mitchell, George and Annie’s house, on the corner of Windsor Terrace and Henry Street in Totterdown. If you turn round you can see the house where the boy who was knocked down by a car (Episode 4) lived.
• Walk up Henry Street and you get to The Shakespeare, seen in the pilot episode.
• Again in the pilot, here’s the street corner where Mitchell and George have their first conversation: the corner of Caledonia Place and Sion Hill in Clifton. The Avon Gorge Hotel is visible on the right.
• There’s a night shot of Mitchell standing at the foot of Park Street in one episode. From memory, I think he was standing by the traffic lights. If you look south you can see the path on College Green along which Mitchell walks while his clothing changes through time.
• The hospital entrance. This is Bristol General Hospital.
• Not absolutely certain about this one, but this is Victoria Park, where Tully takes Annie in Episode 2.

I’d like to find the location of the funeral parlour to add to the list. Any other locations would also be good.

Being Human – a look back

Imagine pitching this as an idea for a TV drama: a recovering drug addict, a gay man in denial of his sexuality and a woman with serious self-esteem issues share a house and try to help each other to cope with normal human society. It might work – but it would be hard to sell it to the public, no matter how well it was done.

But now pitch it as a supernatural show, with a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost metaphorically filling the three roles above. The vampire is addicted to his fix of blood; the werewolf sees his monthly transformation as completely other from his true self; and the ghost fluctuates in visibility according to her confidence level. Then toss in a conspiracy by the vampire underground to subjugate the mortals and you have a show that the Buffy crowd will flock to and the curious might want to investigate. You’ve got Being Human.

Fortunately, you’ve also got something more than a standard cult/genre TV show. Being Human is wittily scripted, shifting in tone from brooding darkness to light humour without crashing its gears. The characters (including the supporting cast) are well drawn – not the comic-book ciphers of the execrable Demons, ITV1’s attempt to corner the similar market. And the plots come from the needs of the characters themselves – this is not a ‘monster of the week’ show. How can it be, when the principals are themselves self-professed ‘monsters’?

Vampire Mitchell longs for a normal life. ‘Recruited’ in WWI, he has the darkest of histories (not seen as yet), but is now on the wagon – except when he falls off. George, a werewolf for just a couple of years, can’t bear the thought of what he might do in his lycanthropic state. And Annie has been haunting the house she shared with her fiancé for a year or more, unable to move on but not knowing why. She drives out the house’s various tenants until Mitchell and George, both porters at the local hospital, rent the house. The three form an unlikely, mutually supportive alliance.

Most of the time, the metaphorical elements of the show take a back seat. There are stories to be told – how Annie met her death; Mitchell’s struggle to cope with killing and recruiting one of the hospital nurses; George’s need to find somewhere safe to transform – and there’s an overall story arc, the vampire insurrection, to maintain our interest. But the extra depth to the show undoubtedly helps. A flashback to Mitchell and George’s first meeting, for instance, doubles as a brief comment on racism – three vampires treat the werewolf to a murderous kicking – as well as homophobia. George’s inability to tell his new girlfriend, Nina, his secret hardly needs explaining.

Being Human has the knack of tweaking supernatural lore to its own ends. Vampires readily go out in daylight – they’re just not fond of the sun. George wards off vampire attacks with a Star of David (he’s Jewish) rather than a crucifix. Staked vampires do turn to dust, Buffy-style, but their clothing remains – much more logical. And using the word ‘recruitment’ instead of the canonical ’siring’ works neatly in the context of the show. (Compare that last point with the use, in Demons, of ’smiting’ instead of ’slaying’ – so self-conscious that I had to snigger every time they said the word.)

There are one or two flaws. George’s werewolf appearance doesn’t come up to the standard expected of prosthetics in these post-Lord of the Rings times, and the insistence by vampire leader Herrick that they are fulfilling the demands of evolution clumsily misappropriates Darwin’s ideas.

But it all ended most satisfactorily. Our odd triple defeated the vampire uprising, George came to terms with the wolf within and came out to Nina (involuntarily, admittedly), and Annie found out how she died – yet remains earthbound. And threads are set in motion for the next series: Nina, scratched by George in wolf form, contemplates her future as a werewolf, and a mysterious unnamed man makes a phone call: ‘We’ve found them’.

All the show really needs now are two things: a bigger budget and a transfer to BBC2. Until then, roll on the DVD set.

Brain dump

I’ve been away for the weekend, so here’s just a collection of stuff.

• Being Human ended very satisfyingly. More later.
• Dollhouse is really struggling.
• City can’t string two decent results together.
• Cross Country trains really don’t provide enough leg room. I’m only a bit taller than average!
• There’s nothing quite like being disconnected from everything but the woman you love.

Back to work.

Quality vs. quantity – part 2

Obviously the one person who reads this blog is the controller of BBC3. All I said was that Being Human could benefit from having an extra couple of episodes per series, like Life on Mars, and guess what? It’s recommissioned for a second series – of eight episodes!

I think I’ve got my licence fee’s worth for this year and next, then.

Quality vs. quantity

I read today (at Digital Spy) that the exceptional Being Human (BBC3) is losing out in the TV ratings to Lost (Sky). That made me think a little: Lost is a good show, but stretched over 20+ episodes a year, like the majority of US shows, it can often drag, especiallly mid-season. Being Human, on the other hand, has only six episodes in total. The quality level is much higher than Lost can manage overall, but when it ends next week I’m going to feel short-changed. Life on Mars (UK version) ran for eight episodes in each of its two seasons, and Being Human could easily use the same extra breathing space.

Anyway – if you can, catch Being Human on iPlayer and see for yourself. Or just hope that it makes it to BBC2 later in the year.