The debut of the American version of “Being Human” hits screens tonight at 9 p.m. on SyFy. The series has been given a 13-episode pick-up for its first season as opposed to the six-episode first season of the British version.
And producer Jeremy Carver says the longer run for its first season will give his version a chance to tell more story.
“As a fan of the BBC version, which we are, we took great delight in having a longer period of time in which we could confront some of these same moments and characters as the British version,” Carver said on Jan. 13 in Pasadena, Calif. “We said to ourselves, and our writers said to us, ‘What if we did this differently?’ I think you’re going to see a lot of moments that you think you recognize from the original which are handled in a completely different way.”
For example, in one of the BBC’s episodes, vampire Mitchell is accused of being a pedophile. Syfy President of Original Programming Mark Stern was excited to see a new version of that story.
“To point at the pedophile episode in particular, you want to let that situation breathe more,” Stern said. “You want to explore the ramifications of the relationship with that young boy and where it might go for a vampire character. I don’t even think it’s a question of exposure. I think they become complementary.”
They also say that fans of the original show will find something to love with the new version.
“I would say if you’re a fan of the original, you’re going to see a show that starts much in the same way as it started in the British version,” Carver said. “It’s a wonderful premise we’ve been handed. Why would we mess with it too much? We follow a similar trajectory in the first couple episodes, where we’re laying in elements that will be unique to our version.”
You can check out the first episode tonight and judge for yourself.
When you take a 6 episode series and stretch the storyline to 13 episodes you loose the impact of the story. The story will start to feel like “a piece of butter spread too thinly over a slice of toast”
My wife and I watched the premiers on SyFy tonight. We are fans of the original British version so we were curious to see what they’d do with it. I have to say, it was better than expected at least for the first episode. There were some plot lines that they lifted directly from the original, but they did make some changes which weren’t bad at all. I think if it was going to be a direct re-telling of the original I’d have zero interest in watching it, but some of the changes may make it watchable for me.
I’ll still take the original over this any day, however. I think it’ll depend more upon what I think of the actors playing the main characters more than anything else to help me determine whether or not I’ll stick with this new version.
For now the original is better. I agree with Mark F. that some of the changes to the original story are intriguing…but one of the biggest weaknesses to me was in the chemistry between the actors. While I found the chemistry between the two male leads satisfactory, when adding Sally it fell short.
As for the acting…not even close but I really didn’t expect it to be. Russell Tovey as George in the original is over the top hilarious and he knows how to hit the dramatic parts as well. He’s would be hard to beat and although I know they said they were trying to do something different with it I can’t help but think the actors they picked seemed to only be weak American versions of the originals.
In my opinion they should have taken the idea and completely revamped it like what they did with BSG. I mean look at the characters of Starbuck and Baltar…they were the same in some ways to the original but completely different. This redo seems too close for comfort especially when the original is still on the air. I will continue to watch however as the pickings are slim for now.
I agree with parts of all above. Personally, I was disappointed. Who the heck was responsible for this casting nightmare? The Brit casting was spot-on…the physical appearance and manner of the two male leads really seemed to suit their characters. Mitchell had a kind of grimy sensual snarkiness missing in the American vamp character, and George was the perfect “big goofy kid” juxtaposed with the wolf. There isn’t enough of a physical difference between the two male leads in the US version, they look too similar to me, and the script and direction made both seem whiny and boring. I kept having to remind myself which was which. Sally was just plain whiny. The only casting kudo I can give is for Mark Pellegrino from Lost. He brought a smarmy nastiness to his role that was delightful.
Ultimately, neither the script nor the cast engaged me. While there were some interesting concepts, they were far outweighed by the sheer mediocrity of the production. It seemed that SyFy was aiming for the lowest common denominator here rather than give this show the edge it needs. It felt like an emasculated version of the Being Human I’ve come to enjoy heartily. A real shame.