Phillippe Bosse/SyfyVampiroid vs. WereGhost! Blood-Monger vs. Wolf Specter! The "Real" Housemates of Boston Common. C.S.I.: Cadavers, Super Interesting.
These are the blockbuster titles brainstormed by Being Human star Sam Huntington when we suggested the brilliant Syfy series might need a new name to rival the ratings of its network's Saturday-night schlockfests. (Mega Python vs. Gatoroid was seen by millions.)
Strangely, the best new show of 2011 is not attracting the viewers it deserves. The British cult classic remake has a wickedly smart, original script and captivating characters—a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf sharing the rent in a Boston brownstone—played by a lovable cast who get along so famously they just vacationed together in Hawaii. (We tackled Sam, who plays werewolf Josh, when we spotted him on the return flight last night.)
Last week, we also chatted with Being Human show runner Jeremy Carver (who helms the series with his wife, Anna Fricke), who promised the show is about to get even darker and funnier. Based on his writing for Supernatural (including last season's perverse zombie episode "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid"), we believe him.
Here's why you should tune in...
The bloody sex scene between Rebecca and Aidan was intense. Are we going to see more of that kind of graphic content on Being Human?
The short answer is yes, in different ways. I think the premise here is to handle it slightly more on an adult level, or hopefully, and to me it's sort of grounded and real and when you think about vampires having sex—I think Aidan [Sam Witwer] says it in the episode, "blood leads to bloodlust"—and so sex and bloodlust are sort of intertwined when it comes to a vampire. And arousal. At least in that world.
So what about Aidan's relationships with humans? Will we see a human-vampire romance this season?
You're going to see Aidan attempting to have more relationships with humans—not necessarily sexual or romantic. The show likes to pop around in time, so we'll see moments where all of our vampires are perhaps having or revisiting a relationship in their past.
How much is Syfy's Being Human deviating from the original U.K. version?
Sally's death is the same as it was in the U.K. version. But after episode six we start to deviate a lot. Early in the season we hinted to the U.K. viewer that you're going to see some familiar characters and situations that you may recognize, but we're going to start twisting them off in different ways than you expect. In episode six you see a mixture of completely new situations and then something borrowed from the U.K. version—which we then spin off in a very different way. From this point on, I don't think anything [the U.K. fans] recognize will turn out in the way they expect.
Can you tease what's to come for each of the characters? Starting with Josh: Are we going to see Josh's fiancée and the rest of his family, including his sister?
You're going to see Josh [Sam Huntington] eventually confront his family, in what is a really, really exciting episode. The show takes a big departure from what people are expecting—it's completely original to the American version. And it is a funny, scary, heartbreaking episode when Josh confronts his family. You're going to see Josh further explore romance, [which] is going to make him, as most things, come directly into conflict with how much of himself to share, of his real self to share with the person that he loves, which will lead to some pretty severe consequences. I don't think Josh is smart enough to realize it yet, but you don't beat up a vampire like Marcus without consequences. So we're going to see Josh and Aidan's world collide a little more than they would like.
What's ahead for Aidan?
You mentioned that you found the bloody nature of Aidan and Rebecca's sexual relationship to be a little risqué. Their relationship continues down an even more twisted sort of way. These are two people who have feelings for each other and there is something in the original ingredient of how they came together—Aidan killed her—that they can never shake. We're going to see them explore this sort of lover's relationship in a frisky, graphic, scary, adult and surprising way. You're going to see Aidan being spun into Bishop's [Mark Pellegrino] web more and more as the season goes on, leaving him grasping on how to extricate himself from Bishop's control after 270-odd years. In particular you're going to see us delve much deeper into Aidan and Bishop's relationship in the past. Their relationship has taken some quite severe turns over the years, which is [now] all coming to a head. You're going to learn a lot of surprising things about each of them when you visit with them in the past, which we're really excited about. I think it's super cool.
And Sally, the ghost with the most?
Sally finally remembers how she died, [and with that] there is a certain retribution for her death that must be paid. This is a woman who, having learned how she died, is now going to take control of her death in a way that she had not done so before. And it's not going to come easy. She's going to go down a couple really dark, really long, really scary paths to get there, and I can't even say it ends all that great. But she is hell-bent on reclaiming some sense of who she was after she learns how she died.
But there's no guarantee that closure is about bunny rabbits and rainbows. Closure can be a very messy, scary thing—[especially] for Sally. Sally flirts between the dark side and the good side. She's going to meet ghosts that have all the wrong intentions for her, and ghosts that are romantic relationships, and it's going to be a constant struggle. Josh, too—and Aidan as well—is constantly struggling between good and bad. In the second half of the season Sally struggles with that a lot more, like the boys do.
A new episode of Being Human airs tonight at 9 on Syfy.