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By Andrew Watson · March 28, 2012
To explain the premise of Being Human, or perhaps to even watch this season without any prior knowledge, is a fairly challenging experience. Going against the grain of not trying to establish too many implausible ideas at once, Being Human crams in as many of them as they can fit into 57 minutes of runtime. It’s a world in which vampires and werewolves exist in complete secret from the rest of the human world, as well as hate each other and desire the extinction of the other species. The season has particularly focused on an upcoming war that is unfolding to the complete ignorance of the human race. If it sounds a lot like Twilight, there are ghosts too, who cannot pass on until they’ve completed some kind of task. This is at the crux of episode eight.
Being Human’s season finale rests entirely on the fate of a baby and to the episode’s credit, the premise at the heart of the A plot is smartly done. The entire season has mostly revolved around a werewolf child in the care of ghost Annie (Lenora Critchlow) who has battled bravely to protect it in the past seven episodes against the threat of vampires. The final episode delivers a twist of fate, with a “prophecy”: she is told she must kill her baby. It serves as an interesting twist on the quandary that some mothers face, whether they can go through with aborting their child. This is served well with a brutal scene in which a vampire tries to take the decision out of her hands and makes her finally make a decision one way or another.
The A plot is aided alongside a less engaging plot to destroy the lair of the vampires by Tom (Michael Socha) and Hal (Damien Molony), who start concocting makeshift bombs in the back of a greasy spoon cafe. There are interesting moments, including a chilling conversation with reformed vampire Hal and head of the vampires Mr Snow (Mark Gatiss). Like all good villains, he is both unpredictable and one step ahead of everybody else in the narrative, demonstrated no better than in a finale where he manipulates all three of the good guys into subservience without a single fist thrown. Having spent seven episodes carefully establishing the vampires are a direct threat to Annie’s baby, the rug is pulled firmly from underneath our feet with some clever writing. The problem is that in order to get there, the scenes that build up to it trundle along and never really get into second gear, content to leave all the excitement to the last minute.
What is quite likable about Being Human is its trashy aesthetic, which goes for the thrills of horror and sci-fi through a lo-fi British look. Its B-movie style is far removed from anything else in Britain right now, whose dramas for a young audience have been majorly influence by Skins in recent years. Its midpoint, in which desperate vampire Cutler (Andrew Gower) attempts to kill the werewolf baby (which is killing him in the process), has the feel of a classic 70s/80s horror, looking a little bit naff yet still being a little frightening in the process. Returning to the finale, the strangeness of Mr Snow’s lair is eerie and discomforting, invoking a mixture of The Wicker Man and Dario Argento. When the show moves away from the horror aesthetic and into straight action, such as the big explosion at the end, its cheapness makes it feel less immersive.
Wrapping up the final moments of Being Human’s fourth season is the C plot, which introduces a shadowy group of suits whose job is to stop the existence of werewolves, vampires, and ghosts from being discovered by the humans. It also serves as the development of Alex (Kate Bracken), a freshly dead ghost still learning the ropes. The final scene, in which the unnamed head of the suits calmly yet sinisterly advises a human witness that it would be in her best interests to forget what she saw, is at great contrast with his friendly demeanour towards his colleague in the office. He is clearly at odds with the malevolent and power hungry Mr Snow, but his good intentions are likely to be seriously compromised. Exactly what kind of threat he will be in the next season is entirely unclear. Needless to say, it will probably be complicated.