For months, we’ve all wondered what the American version of “Being Human” look like. The show, which debuts Monday on SyFy, is a remake of the British TV hit and while it may start at the same place, the American cast insist that it will be “different.”
For one thing, the cast has avoided the original series.
“We were all instructed to not watch too much of the BBC series because they didn’t want it to affect our performance,” says Sam Huntington. “Our show tonally is very different. The look of the show is different. We branch out and dive into the back-stories of the characters a lot more.”
“The vampire lore is [also] really more investigated in our show. I think as the season progresses we’re going to really be our own self-contained entity,” he added.
His co-star Sam Witwer added that he was keen to avoid comparisons with his counterpart Aidan Turner.
“I watched one episode [of the original] and I thought what they were doing was fantastic,” Witwer said. “I was really enjoying it, but I didn’t want to unintentionally mimic anything that Aidan had done.”
In fact, Witwer thinks the BBC version could benefit from the American version.
“We owe them a debt of gratitude,” he said. “It’s my hope that we develop an audience that we can pass off to them, because they deserve it.”
The new series debuts Monday night on SyFy. We’ve got a preview below.
Let me get this straight… We’re different, therefore the original means nothing, does that about sum up the thought I’m seeing here?
When will American show-runners get their heads out of their collective posterior orifices and USE THE AVAILABLE RESOURCES to make shows better and not tread over old ground.
I normally love the originals more than remakes. But honestly, not this time. It’s very shocking to me, but the American version of Being Human kinda blows the British version out of the water. :/
Not really sure about the American version. The original will be hard to beat.
From what I understand they are sticking to the original storyline…just getting there a different way. To me that’s just a straight remake with a little embellishment (which is what more backstory would mean). I really don’t see what the point is…nevertheless I intend to give it a try. It’s not like there are a lot of shows to choose from right now anyway. I would have preferred another season of SGU, but I guess that’s too much to ask.
I wonder what would be cheaper, buying the rights to air the BBC version of the series, or producing your own version?
My understanding was that by “creating” their own version, the US-based studios get to keep more of the monies that come in from the show. I would like to find out how the changing lifespans of TV shows have affected the decisions to keep or kick out shows. The studios used to want to get to the magic 100th episode, to ensure good ROI via syndication, but there are plenty of series out there that never got to 100 eps that do well in rerunsland, otherwise not even underground hits like Firefly and Moonlight would show up in reruns so frequently.
It does makes me wonder about middle-of-the-pack shows that never show up in syndication deals but should, and shows I can’t imagine people still watch that seem to be on all the time.
Now if keeping more of the incoming revenue isn’t the reason for remake mania, then I have no idea.
The actors not watching the original series is a smart move. If it were being adapted from a book or graphic novel, you’d throw them right into it, but if you show them someone else playing the character, they’re gonna start imitating that earlier performance rather than taking the character as its written and doing their own thing with it.
…. i am by turns enraged and incredibly disappointed everytime the ‘new and improved’ Syfy (what, they can’t say ‘skiffy’ like the rest of us?) opens its collective yap. Calling this an ‘original series’ is tantamount to me saying that i coined the phrase ‘all’s well that ends well’ just because i say it with a slightly different intonation than originally intended.
get the hell away from the theosophic apologist SF (ie. BG:R) and please, for the love of everything holy and profane, please please stop adding ‘Twilight’ to anything involving vampires. The ORIGINAL Being Human was so nice because they didn’t bother to reference it in any episode i saw. Given what little i have seen of the remake, i would have pushed that babe down a flight of stairs too, i’m glad she’s dead: now if only she’d shut up about it.
I thought SyFy would branch out a bit…I don’t know, maybe TRY to make their “original series” (don’t get me started on that!), maybe a LITTLE original?! It’s been a year or so since I have seen season one of BBC’s Being Human, but from what I can tell the only change were the names. I mean it was literally, almost scene-for-scene, the same exact show. Oh, except the characters on this version had no depth, comedic appeal, and some of them were just out right bad actors. And what was with the many pop culture references?? Was the “voting for Hillary” comment just to further shove it in everyone’s face that this show was a ” USA!!” crap re-make of a great foreign show? Like we haven’t done THAT enough already?? I hated it, I hated it, I hated it. If I want to watch Being Human, I will watch the original NAME BRAND- not the store bought version.