In Review: Being Human: Eve of the War
Synopsis: Our werewolf and ghost heroes have to protect a newborn child from marauding vampires.
Review: The fourth series of Being Human kicked off in real style earlier this evening by pretty much picking the story up a matter of weeks after us seeing Mitchell die.
Noticeably missing is Nina, which is explained fairly quickly and has much to do with George’s mood at the start of the hour. In a nutshell an incident with some vampires saw her off during that time in which we were away, but left behind is a baby girl that George hasn’t had the presence of mind to name because of his grief. He feels like he has nothing left to live for and who could blame him. Although with regard to the babies name. The give away is in the title of the episode, but how we find out is rather touching and very well played out.
We also get a glimpse of the future in this episode so right away we know that the daughter of George lives on despite the attempts by the vampires to kill her, which ultimately sees George having to sacrifice himself for the greater good by close of the episode.
There’s lots of good stuff in this. Most notable is the reintroduction of Tom the werewolf from last season who is a key player in helping bring George to his senses by giving him an opportunity to exact his revenge, but unwittingly leads him into a trap leaving Annie in charge of baby, which as hinted above is temporarily taken by the Vampires who fear the child because she is the first child to be conceived by two werewolves. Werewolves are made not born. The vampires fear comes from an old prophecy concerning the war child.
What we have in Tom is a nieve but goodhearted character who is willing to make a stand for those he cares about, and he is wanting to get into the good graces of George and Annie so he can feel a connection.
Meanwhile the introduction of other new character Hal was done rather well. Apparently vampire Hal has been living with a werewolf and ghost of his own since the 1950s and has done so with apparently little interference given that his Werewolf friend has lived long enough to die of old age after one transformation to far. An interesting thing we learn is that Ghosts eventually fade into nothing if they have no relationships to anchor them in their presence, which is a concern Hal addresses with his old werewolf friend.
Much of the story though is focused on George and his departure from the show, which makes for a rather touching close to his chapter of the story. Something he points out to Annie and Tom before passing over to the other side is that his story has ended.
There’s a fair bit of action in this toward the end and some fantastic acting from Michael Socha as Tom who looks like he could be bringing some athleticism to proceeding as well as some of that snarling humour that we got from Mitchell in previous episodes.
Hal who is played by Damien Molony has huge boots to fill and seems up to the task. I can’t explain fully why I say this, but from the little have seen of him in the first episode his portrayal of a more upper class vampire seems to have a certain amount of gravitas and will bring a different dynamic to the series, which is good because the last thing we need is a new character that is a carbon copy of Mitchell. We need someone new to cheer, laugh and cry far.
The one under utilized character in this episode was Annie, who is played to perfection by Lenora Critchlow. She seemed to spend most of the episode just moping around and generally being useless, which is a far cry from the ballsy ghost we seen in the tail end of the first season and throughout most of the second series. I only hope that her character gets more to do in the coming episodes. Especially given that she is the only original character that remains.
This was a fairly good start for the show. The whole story surrounding the war child and the Vampires is going to make for a fascinating journey in the coming weeks and watching how the new additions get on will be fun also, but I don’t think I will be able to forget the original trinity of Annie, George and Mitchell, who seemed to exhibit the best and worst of being human while showing the monsters that we mere mortals can truly be. In a nutshell they seemed more human and humane than the mortal characters in the series.
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