For the upcoming second season of SyFy’s Being Human, producers Anna Fricke and Jeffrey Carver say the fans can expect different things from the British predecessor.
“We made a decision this year to do completely original story lines,” Fricke says.
Carver added that there may be some inevitable crossover between the original and the U.S. version because both series “swim in the same pond,” but that “there was a great effort to make the series as original as possible this year given that its roots are still in the BBC version.”
“And I think that one of the things that we’re playing with is that in trying to become more and more human they are in actuality being forced to confront their monstrosities more than ever,” Carver added. ”
And so I think whereas last year you maybe had a few of the characters going down darker paths and being able to rely on the other characters, this year each of our three main characters is being so enmeshed in sort of a darker path that there’s a little bit less of a safety net this year in each other, in that basically what do you do when you’re falling, falling, falling, and your support system isn’t necessarily there for you when you need them.”
Among those darker paths will be storylines surrounding Aidan and the consequences of his actions in the later portion of season one.
“Aidan is basically confronted with the fallout from the death of Bishop, who he killed at the end of last year,” Carver says. “And he – we are introduced to another sort of – another aspect of the vampire hierarchy in current day America, which involves sort of this overall leader known as Mother.”
“And Mother basically is going to sort of essentially trade Aidan his freedom – give Aidan – offer Aidan his freedom if he agrees to train her disgraced vampire daughter (played by Dollhouse’s Dichen Lachman) to be the leader of Boston,” adds Carver.
That won’t be the only bit of Aidan’s past coming back to haunt him, says Carver. The last person he turned will return for the second season. The new character is named Henry is played by Kyle Schmid, and his presence will “complicate” Aidan’s life.
Fricke says one of the challenges facing the storylines for Aidan was in creating the series’ back story and history for its vampire world.
“I think it’s a necessary aspect of Aidan’s background to tell, but it’s been a little tricky to figure out the realm of vampire politics,” Fricke says. “Because vampires are obviously by nature so old, and things go so far back, we just wanted to make sure that we got things right, and I think we did.”
Aidan won’t the only one facing some new complications as the season begins. Josh and Nora will be “anxiously” awaiting the first full moon to see if the scratch Nora received from Josh while he was a werewolf has turned her into a creature of the night also.
“The results of which have sort of an explosive effect on their relationship, plus we’ll see some more people from Josh’s past reenter the picture in a surprising way,” Carver teased.
The past will also come back to haunt Sally as well–and not just because of her decision to save Aidan last year instead of taking the door to the afterlife. Carver says that we’ll see more ghosts this year on the series and that Sally will deal with ” spectral temptation that will also lead her down a much darker path.”
And with the second season, Carver and Fricke say that we’ll see different versions of the familiar monsters introduced in season one.
“We have the new sort of form of vampires and we will also see different kinds of ghosts and a sort of different ghost society that we had touched into before, and also a different kind of werewolf,” Fricke says. “And so while it may have that same mob structure with the vampires, I think yes, we do see a sort of greater world and hierarchy in the ghosts and in the werewolves.”
“And this year we are basically starting to expand frankly the types of werewolves that we’re seeing, and there will be a particular type and – that Josh comes across that will greatly alter his world,” Carver adds. “And we’ll be seeing that there is basically more than one kind of species of werewolf in our world, and we’re really excited about that.”
The new season of Being Human kicks off on Monday, January 16 on SyFy.
If you missed season one and want to catch up, the show is available on DVD and via Netflix streaming.
It is still going to be really bad.
I wasn’t crazy about this version of BH at first, but I have to say, both my wife and I came to like it quite a bit as time went on. Not as good as the BBC version, but definitely worth watching.