TV GUIDE: Monday TV in Review: Alcatraz, Lost Girl, Being Human and More
Jan 16, 2012
by Matt Roush
... the second season of Syfy's underwhelming adaptation of the British Being Human (9/8c), where casting is even more of an issue. (The far superior original is returning to BBC America for a fourth season on Feb. 25, but minus some key cast members, so it remains to be seen how well that will hold up.)
In Syfy's version of the three-ghouls-sharing-a-house premise, set in a very unconvincingly faked (in Montreal) Boston, dark-and-handsome Sam Witwer fares the best at conveying the timeless angst of reluctant vampire leader Aidan, and his is the strongest storyline, evoking the metaphor (familiar from Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, to name just a few) of feeding as addiction. Abstaining from live kills though sorely tempted, Aidan finds himself playing babysitter and advisor to the Vampire Queen's daughter Suren, a pouty "errant princess" he must groom to take control of the Boston pack. As played by Dollhouse's exotic Dichen Lachman (who doesn't appear until next Monday's episode), Suren brings some much-needed attitude to this largely toothless enterprise.
Aidan's roomies, earnest werewolf Josh (Sam Huntington, mugging as if he were in a sitcom) and shrill ghost Sally (the unbearable Meaghan Rath), are less palatable company, and it doesn't help that Huntington has zero chemistry with Kristen Hager as the nurse/girlfriend he may have turned wolf during the last full moon. (Hard to imagine, but MTV's Teen Wolf is telling this sort of story with much more verve, wit and style.)
As the show's title suggests, what these characters desire above all is normalcy, the sense of being human. (Sally's best moment, in episode 2, comes when she takes possession of a partygoer's body and is blissfully able to experience the various senses again, if only briefly.) I'd settle for them just being interesting...
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