To help the U.S. edition of Being Human follow its own path in season two, star Sam Witwer, who plays Aiden on the show, says that the writers for the SyFy version avoided watching the second series of the British version.
“There are a few things that happen that are similar [to the British version], but only a scattered few,” Witwer tells Blastr. “Not really on any regularity. I mean, a part of it is that our writers haven’t seen the second season of the British series. They stayed away from it on purpose. They wanted to have this season be entirely its own thing, and they felt the only way to do that was to maintain ignorance over what had happened on the British series. … We definitely take a few risks and diverge quite a bit from what we established in the first season.”
Season two will be “a lot darker than the first season. Quite a bit darker. I mean, bad, bad things happen, and, yeah, my character takes some very, very dark turns,” he said with a laugh. “So I can’t, like, end up giving away too much there. The whole thing with Aidan, in the first season he was trying his best to stay away from his own kind, and this season it’s not really an option.”
Witwer says that despite Aiden’s attempts to get out of the vampire world, he’ll be drawn back into this year.
Part of that will be a new on-screen relationship with new recurring star Dichen Lachman as Susan.
In addition, we’ll see Aiden in some other time periods via new flashback.s
“Now we get to go and spend a good deal of time in the ’30s. We spend a ton just on the backstory of who Aidan was in the ’30s and what happened to the vampires back then,” he says. “Because the vampires we’ve seen are, they hide in the shadows and they have day jobs and they try to keep a very low profile. Well, back in the day, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Things were a lot cooler for these guys, and they had a lot more money, and they had a lot more prestige, and they were a little bit flashier, and we learned why they felt it was necessary to change that and head for the shadows and seek a low profile and really just hide out. We learn why they changed, and we also learn what part Aidan had to play in that. So it’s really cool stuff. We even spent some time in World War I.”
I’m glad. I have no problem with the American version, but I didn’t like some of the storytelling choices in the second and third series of the British original. I want to see how they can take the concept in a different direction.
Glad to hear they are going in a different direction but after seeing the first eppy for this season it looks like the vampire storyline is really the weakest. I mean “Mother” and the whole council of vampire government has been done before.
After viewing the preview for the season it looked like Sally’s storyline was more interesting…with possession and exploring reincarnation. Even the hint about the “purebloods” with the werewolves looked more interesting than the vampire plot.
Personally I hope they don’t lose the focus of the three of them trying to fit into human society…one of the best episodes from last season was Aidan and Josh at Josh’s parent’s house. Trying to act like everything was normal around the family gave some of the season’s more humorous moments…it was the first episode that I actually thought the American version might have some steam.
The “Mother/Council” thing seemed to me like a basic setup for the story line of Aidan being forced to be a “good and proper” vampire. If things go the way it seemed they were hinting, there will be more of Aidan trying to keep Susan from going overboard and her pushing him to go overboard.
But that’s just how it seemed to me.
While I know that it would make for better TV if it didn’t happen, I personally hope that Josh and Nora make a good go of it this season.