The sucking black hole of fandom claims another victim!

[sholio]

Well, Leverage is on temporary hold right now, because Being Human ate my soul. OMG, f'list! Is anyone watching this? Because you all have to run out and get hold of it right now! It's a British series, apparently very obscure (I think there's one(?) person on my f'list who posts about it); its first series (6 episodes) just finished up, and apparently there's a second series coming next year. Only six episodes! It's not much of a viewing commitment!

And omg omg omg, this show ...! Okay, it has its WTF moments and one particularly awful special effect that makes me cringe every time they do it (maybe they'll have enough budget next year to do it better, because it utterly breaks the mood when they're trying for serious and angsty and then bring out the impossibly cheesy f/x) -- but all in all, I give it five out of five pineapples on the Psych scale of total character adorability. XD I was only going to watch episode 3 this morning, but ended up spending the whole day mainlining the rest of the series. I couldn't stop!

The basic premise is that a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf rent an apartment in Bristol together. (Well, the vampire and the werewolf rent the apartment; the ghost was already haunting it when they moved in.) It sounds like the pilot for a truly awful sitcom, but instead it's done with a wonderful mixture of humor and angst and compelling character arcs for all three characters -- in just six episodes! I kept having to pause playback so that I could squee and flail (or, as greyias says, "squail") -- I believe there was literal flailing at some points. This show mashes all my buttons for "found family" and dorkily adorable characters and broken people finding comfort in each other and (mostly) platonic boy/girl BFFs -- plus a fairly complex overall story arc (though it feels a bit rushed or oddly paced at times, as there are only 6 episodes).

(FYI, if you do go looking for it, there is a sort of "episode 0" -- the original pilot -- which has an almost completely different cast. Do not watch this first, because they change most of the actors and it's really, really disconcerting. There's nothing in it that you have to see in order to understand the rest of the show; you can pick up just fine with 1x01 and carry on from there. I haven't actually watched "episode 0" all the way through yet; I started with 1x01, then went back and tried to watch it, and having other actors in the roles instead of my adorable dorks was too weird.)

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

You may not have heard m,uch about it, because I think a lot of people watched 1x00 and fell in love with it last year and the first new ep not only changes the characters but also the narrative structure (I felt for worse). Otoh, I do think that it gets better as the series continues. (I still miss the original Annie and her amazingly cute accent, though :)

I agree with the somewhat odd (for us) pacing, which I don't think is just that it's UK, because other series don't feel as odd...I think it's the changing and changing again and not yet fully come into its own syndrome, but I have high hopes for series 2!

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

*nods* I can see that; I only watched the first, oh, 10 minutes or so of the original pilot (plus skipping ahead a bit just to see what Annie was like *g*) because the character disjoint was just too disconcerting, but in general tone and style, it reminded me more of the last couple episodes (where I think the series really hit its stride) than the first couple episodes of the revamped series, which went for a somewhat more episodic and mainstream-commercial feeling. What you said about the recasting/restructuring throwing them off makes a lot of sense and maybe explains a little bit of the thrown-together feeling of the first couple of episodes, while the last ones were, IMHO, so tight.

On the other hand, in my case, since I first encountered the series with the new cast, I fell and fell hard for them; I find both of the original castmates disappointing compared to the new ones, but I think a lot of that has to do with what I'm used to.

I'm delighted to have a series 2 to look forward to! All of my shows right now are either cancelled or so lackluster that I have trouble getting excited about them coming back.