In idly surfing, I came across the fact that our Scyfy ‘Being Human’ is a remake of a BBC series that’s in its third season. Has anyone watched this? Is it worth tracking down? Mind you, I’m fairly easy to entertain. I like watching our ‘Being Human’, if only to be endlessly fascinated by Aiden’s chin.
Yes, it’s worth watching.
BBC America airs it, if you get that channel.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost all walk into a bar…
Seriously though, my wife and I just finished the first series of it and begun the second. We like it a lot and it balances the drama, comedy, and a little action very well. There’s a little of everything and the acting is pretty good. It also doesn’t hurt that Annie is easy on the eyes.
Series 1 and 2 are both available on Netflix, though not streaming at this time.
Yes, I’ve watched the whole series as it airs on BBC America. They’re currently showing the third series. I like it a lot.
Yes, it’s on BBC2 on Sunday nights right now.
I kinda half watched the first season and didn’t bother with the rest. Didn’t really interest me. On the other hand, I haven’t seen a single episode of the American version.
I’ve seen both. The American version is more “in your face” but I like it better than the original. In the original they spend a lot of time angsting and “being human” and I want to see more vamping, morphing, and ghosting, which the American show does. It can be over the top at times though.
As far as I can tell, they’re copying the original plots but adding more “oomph” to them. It’s interesting to watch the original, and then the American “remake” of that episode.
Well, I purchased the first episode of the first season from Amazon, and have watched maybe half of it. Very different from ours – I’m a little taken aback by the ghost making tea, sweeping floors, standing on the porch holding a pizza box and talking to the pizza guy…where can I get one of these to help out around the house? All of the back stories seem to be greatly condensed. That apartment they’re living in gives me claustrophobia – are apartments in England really that tiny? It would be like living in a college dorm forever.
I’m part way through the second series, and haven’t started watching the remake yet. The biggest selling point of the UK version imho is that Aidan Turner is gorgeous.
I’m a big fan of the Brit version. The American version’s not bad, but to me it feels like it’s played very shallowly - no real ‘oomph’ to it, no real emotion, it’s all hurried over in favor of the action. It’s a loss. And NONE of the actors are at anywhere near the skill level of their BBC counterparts. They’re capable and mostly watchable, (though the guy playing the Mitchell counterpart is just plain awful) but they don’t hit the same level of talent.
Interesting note about the BBC version - the Nina character was supposed to have been killed off first season, but they liked what the actress did with her so much they kept her on. Nina rocks.
Yup. Season 2 improves, but season 1 is still enjoyable. It’s not unusual for a show about vamps, etc, to have some plot points about the characters struggling with the human aspects of themselves, but this one does really well exploring the idea that actually, these characters are human, just a bit different.
They’re living in a house (not an apartment) of absolutely average size. There are millions of terraced houses like that with families of four or five in them - it’s the standard family home.
In my personal opinion, the American version lacks chracter, atmosphere, and acting ability. But that’s just an opinion. I think it’s pretty dire.
Heh…yeah, that post made me do a double take. I live in Canada, not the UK, and have lived in actual detached houses for most of my life, but the brief period (~2 years, IIRC) when I lived in a row house, it was about the same size as the one the BH characters live in. Maybe a tad bit smaller, 'cuz I was sure smaller at the time!
And the place the American characters live in struck me as unbelievably vast.
Vast? Wow. That’s such a culture shock. The smallest house I’ve ever lived in was 900 square feet (sorry, I don’t know what that is in metric) and the biggest was an old ramshackle 1920’s 3-story house in the hood that was about 21,000 sq. feet. Back on topic, the American stories seem to have a more relaxed pace. With the BBC, I felt I couldn’t blink or I’d miss a vital plot point.
That may have to do with how many episodes there are per season. The BBC series had only 6 episodes the first season and 8 the next. It looks like there will be 13 episodes in this first season of the American version, so it’s not surprising that the BBC version was packed full of important information.
I watched the first three episodes with a friend.
Horrible. The acting was Lost Room-level. At least the Lost Room had an interesting premise.
I’ve seen the first season of the British version. I liked it well enough, but I’m not in a rush to see the rest of it or the American remake.
It is shocking just how different the expected sizes are. A while back I read a thread here where the guy was having some housing problems and his one-bedroom house was something over 1200sq’ not including outside space (in Washington DC). I had no mental image of how big that actually was, since we rarely use square footage in the UK, but nobody mentioned that as being particularly large, so presumably they didn’t think it was.
Shortly after reading that thread, I measured my flat for a homeswapper website: 634sq’. This is a two-bedroom flat that is not considered particularly small. For a couple of months we had three adults and two kids living here. That was cramped, but two adults and two kids would be absolutely normal.
I kinda had expected American homes to be larger, but was surprised by just how big the difference is.
Back on topic, I loved the Lost Room too and never noticed any problems with the acting.
In Spain the standard for a 5-people family is 90m[sup]2[/sup]: 968sqft. That’s both a legal standard and a customary one. When I see people in these boards talking about a 1200sqft house as “a starter home” for a couple with no kids, I’m not sure whether to laugh my ass off or cry.
My current rental is the same size as a studio I had in Philadelphia: the rental has 2 bedrooms and would be considered appropriate for a family of 4.