http://jam.canoe.ca/Video/DVD_Column/2010/07/19/14757351.html
Brilliant 'Being Human' hits DVD By BRUCE KIRKLAND, QMI Agency Blood and sex, fangs and full moons, humour and heartache: What's not to like about Being Human? This supernatural television series from Britain looks like a fully formed, high-concept, sure-fire success. But looks are deceiving. The brilliance of Being Human is both an accident -- and the result of years of hard slogging. "I think if we had been approached in the beginning to write a supernatural show, we would have ended up with something far less satisfying," affable series creator Toby Whithouse says from London. Whithouse is on the telephone to Canada because Being Human: Season 1 debuts Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray. Both are two-disc sets. They share identical extras, including helpful character profiles and a Whithouse session reminding us how tenuous success really is -- especially because the first fanbase was inspired by social media, not conventional ratings. You wouldn't think so, not today, not in the era of Twilight and True Blood. Like them, Being Human plumbs the public's obsessive interest in the intoxicating world of vampires, werewolves and ghosts, combining them intelligently. Whithouse put a vampire, werewolf and ghost into a Bristol house as flatmates. They are all twentysomethings (sort of). They are all likeable and complicated. They are all cursed. "I flatter us," Whithouse says with a chuckle. "We were, I hope, a bit ahead of the curve." Being Human did pre-date the Twilight phenomenon and the True Blood fangdom. So much so that Whithouse assumed they were doomed. "When we delivered what would ultimately become Being Human to the BBC, at the time we thought: 'We haven't got a hope in hell! Who on earth wants to watch anything about vampires?' Then, of course, all the other shows took off. So I like to think we were there at the spearhead." Originally, actor-turned-screenwriter Whithouse was approached by a production company to write a series about all-human housemates: "A show about a group of college graduates who decide to buy a house together, with the stresses and strains that puts on their friendships. I thought, well, it's not really the most scintillating idea that I've ever heard. I was about to turn it down when, completely unbidden, I had these ideas for three characters. At this stage they were completely human. Mitchell was a recovering sex addict, Annie was a kind of borderline agoraphobic and George was this guy who had anger issues and was kind of anal and repressed. I wrote pages and pages and pages of biog for these characters." The production team was pleased. But they still did not have a first-episode story. "We spent months pretty much banging our heads against a brick wall and we couldn't come up with anything." At the final all-or-nothing meeting, Whithouse jokingly suggested George should be a werewolf. Eureka! George's anger issues obviously could be linked to the werewolf curse. "We had nothing to lose and, from there, it seemed like a very natural progression that Mitchell the sex addict was a bit like a vampire and Annie the agoraphobic was a bit like a ghost rooted to a house. Suddenly, by the end of the meeting, we were doing a show about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost. But the bedrock of the show is character." At first, Whithouse admits, "I was kind of apologizing for the idea because it is such a ridiculous idea." Yet those characters -- now played by Aidan Turner (Mitchell), Russell Tovey (George) and Lenora Crichlow (Annie) -- are based in reality, not in horror movie cliche. "While I know it is bizarre, given the concept, I've always wanted to do a show that is as realistic as possible," Whithouse says. They are, after all, Being Human. CREATOR AMAZED BY SUCCESS Being Human creator Toby Whithouse is gobsmacked that his hit series from Britain is making an impression in North America. "We were just amazed to get the show on U.K. television in the first place," Whithouse says from London. "Reaching such a wide audience now is such an extraordinarily wonderful surprise -- but a surprise nonetheless! And we are just absolutely thrilled." Being Human is broadcast on BBC America. Season 1 is being released Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray. The series originally launched its overseas invasion with a rousing debut at Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego. "The response that we got from the audience over there was just phenomenal," Whitehouse remembers. "I mean, obviously we're quite British and anal and repressed. To have this kind of unexpurgated euphoria and enthusiasm was just an absolute delight!" I remind Whithouse that Canadians are poised between British reserve and American excess. Laughing, he says: "I think you are then the perfect audience. And you're more likely to get all the tea references." This would have been impossible without British fans who backed Being Human in its infancy, after the pilot broadcast and before the BBC-commissioned first season's six episodes. They pressured BBC executives through Facebook and other social media. "I will always be eternally grateful to the fans," Whithouse says. "But there was a slight downside to it because, when the show got commissioned, a lot of the public felt it was down to them, that they were shareholders." So, when three of four leading roles were recast from the pilot, some fans went sour "with howls of despair." Until they adjusted to the bold new look. "We felt with the series proper that we were starting with a clean sheet," Whithouse says. bruce.kirkl...@sunmedia.ca
