Being Human, Some (slightly obsessive?) thoughts

I've been really enjoying the series of Being Human since it started. By chance I got to see the original pilot and long after G and I would say wistfully 'if only they would bring back that programme with the vampire and the werewolf and the ghost!' It quite escaped our attention, of course, that there actually was a massive online campaign to get the show put back on - we thought it was just us who had noticed and liked it.

It was a delightful surprise then when it did come back, although it took me a while to get used to the new Annie - she seemed slightly too posh and bland compared to the small Northern woman who had played her before, but I'm used to her now.

What is so good about it? Partly that vampires in general just are good. Werewolves of course are inherently less charming but George's pained humanity ably contrasts with and compensates for his bestial condition. Annie the ghost, I do have reservations about, but we'll come to that, at any rate as a female third, she balances out the household dynamics.The combination of these beings with their flat in Bristol, their hospital jobs the ordinary life that surrounds them is particularly satisfying. I like Trueblood very much but it is so much within a tradition of Southern Gothic that it seems quite natural that there should be vampires, just as there are alligators which seem equally unlikely (I haven't travelled much). I think some of my favourite episodes were in the first series for example when they tried to integrate with the local community and Mitchel befriended a small child - only for the household to be branded as paedophiles.

In this second series I have found the whole concept of the vampires and how they operate problematic. There seem to be an awful lot of vampires in Bristol and if they had all previously been in the habit of killing at whim, it is hard to see how this could possibly have been covered up, however skilled their network of support - we're potentially talking about hundreds of people a month found dead and exsanguinated. There would be an outcry!

 Mitchell's authoritarian attempts to impose total abstinence on all the vampires also seems absurd when the possible compromises seem so obvious. Vampires apparently don't need blood to live - they're capable of living off normal food, though in an impaired condition. (Vampires that don't really need blood is another concept I'm not too happy with.) If they have this marvellous network that seems to enable them to get away with practically anything why don't they simply enjoy moderate amounts of the blood of the willing? - like that poor Emo girl that Mitchell appears to have quite gratuitously chained and terrified, despite her initial willingness. Then Mitchell could legitimately crack down on those who wantonly attacked and killed members of the general public. Alright, then, arguably, there would be no story, but it bothers me, possibly because I am in the midst of writing a vampire novel and trying to cover all angles of how it could and couldn't work, I'm sure I've left logic gaps.

The ghost is just too solid, it would be better if she flickered a bit or moved around in a sort of jerky stop motion way. Sometimes it's easy to forget she's a ghost - at least now they've stopped the whole thing with her being able to interact with the general public - I've liked her better these last couple of episodes.

The sinister man who appears to just like bursting werewolves is good, I'm afraid I have to hide my eyes when werewolves get put in the werewolf bursting machine.