WRITER: Toby Whithouse[SPOILERS] In amongst the discordant stings, blaring soundtrack, flickering lights (atmosphere!), and a general sense of chaotic chutzpah, there was a decent finale struggling to get out. However, despite flashes of excellence and a strong performance from Lyndsey Marshal as Dr. Lucy, I'm afraid to say I found this climactic episode an underwhelming culmination. What should have been a revelatory hour (everything coming together with precision, drama and excitement), instead drifted around rudderless, occasionally aligning for a great scene/sequence, before losing its grip again. Adding to the discontent, it ended with an extended denouement that elicited first a wrinkled brow and then a groan...
DIRECTOR: Charles Martin
GUEST CAST: Donald Sumpter, Lyndsey Marshal, Sinead Keenan, Rebecca Cooper, Jason Watkins, Adrian Schiller, Amy Manson, Mark Fleischmann, Edward Franklin & Sara Lloyd-Gregory
George (Russell Tovey), Annie (Lenora Crichlow) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) are willing patients of Kemp (Donald Sumpter) and Lucy, whose HQ is revealed to be an old bank they've outfitted with medical equipment and populated with a white-shirted Christian workforce. George is having second thoughts about his involvement, not least because it dawns on him that becoming human will mean he'll be unable to communicate with ghost Annie, but on the other hand it will mean a proper life with Nina as a "normal" couple. Annie has misgivings, but the idea of facing eternity with her friends unable to see her is enough to keep her focused.
As expected, a reprieve comes from Mitchell (Aidan Turner), who infiltrates the facility and starts murdering various "white shirts", while invisible on Kemp's security cameras (all this research and the base isn't vampire proof?), in an effort to rescue his friends from the danger they don't even know they're in. That is until George notices a handwritten message from his werewolf sire Tully on a skirting board, warning him that "all the werewolves die", prompting what becomes a two-pronged escape bid.
I don't have the enthusiasm to pick episode 8 apart too much, but what ensued was entertaining but predictable -- mainly because not enough mystery had been held back to surprise us here. Still, the one shock that totally worked was seeing an outraged Kemp stake a kindly psychic to death, in an effort to open "The Door", before conducting a spur-of-the-moment exorcism that sucked Annie through said exit into the afterlife. Mitchell and Lucy also had a tense confrontation where they argued their moral perspectives, both realizing they're people who have blood on their hands in an effort to "help" the afflicted.
The finale resulted in George, Nina and Mitchell escaping without killing their tormentors (they're better than that, see) and fleeing to sanctuary in a Welsh farmhouse. There, remorseful Nina spends her days researching Lucy's literature, while a despondent George and Mitchell grieve the loss of Annie. Then, Lucy reappeared to try and make amends with everyone, but had unsuspectingly been followed by a vengeful Kemp -- who took the opportunity to kill his old partner, but got his comeuppance when Annie reappeared through a Door and dragged him back through with her. Et voila!
The series wrapped up with Annie speaking to her friends through the static of an unplugged TV, revealing how the afterlife is a tedious beaurocracy of whispering waiting rooms, so Mitchell and George resolved to somehow get her back. And then, in a coda that lurched out of nowhere, vampires Daisy (Amy Manson) and Cara (Rebecca Cooper) were seen performing a bizarre blood ritual in a snow-covered field, which succeeded in resurrecting the soiled body of ex-vampire head Herrick (Jason Watkins).
When TV shows get good, I get demanding. Being Human's proven to be one of the UK's best fantasy shows for years, which is even more of an accomplishment because it's an original work and not a reinvention or spin-off. I've enjoyed series 2 a great deal and found it more watchable than the conceptually tighter, funnier first year. Admittedly, it's tough to make a finale that lives up to swelling expectations these days, but while Toby Whithouse managed to concoct something entertaining with a few fun shocks, it just didn't land that many punches.
I think a part of my problem was the wooliness that's surrounded Kemp and Lucy's plan, which never crystallized into something I could get behind and feel frightened by, and the broad strokes of what happened in episode 8 just wasn't very surprising. And that 15-minute denouement didn't work for me -- particularly seeing Kemp stab Lucy (she wasn't responsible for any downfall in his plan, and didn't he have a weird infatuation with her?), and my apathy about Herrick means his unnecessary return doesn't excite me. I'd rather have Ivan back, really -- he was sardonically funny and felt genuinely threatening, whereas Herrick's just a grinning loony.
Overall, I was underwhelmed. It wasn't appalling, it was just perfunctory and uninspired, and I didn't like how Kemp and Lucy were dealt with. Looking ahead to series 3: a change of location will be great, but a part of me hopes this farmhouse locale isn't where the gang are staying because it feels too remote; I'm disappointed Herrick's back; Mitchell dealing with guilt could be very dull; and the prospect of an inter-dimensional "prison break" to get Annie back has definite potential but I have a feeling it'll be silly. And I'm still not sold on how Being Human portrays the afterlife as something utterly boring and monotonous to be avoided at all costs, purely because there's otherwise no way to threaten Annie as a character.
Asides
-- I'd completely forgotten about Cara, the "de-fanged" vampire who was abandoned beneath the funeral parlour and therefore survived the explosion. That's the kind of clever callback I wish Being Human pulled off more regularly.
-- Wouldn't it have been better if they'd just ditched Annie from the show (no offence Ms. Crichlow), and perhaps replaced her with the newly-deceased Lucy? The idea of Mitchell's ex-girlfriend, a woman Nina detests, as a new ghostly housemate is more appealing to me. And Marshal's a better actress.
-- As I said, I thought Lindsey Marshall was the standout performance here, and Donald Sumpter has been good value as a saturnine baddie. I could have done without the Bible-bashing sequence and Christian "brothers", though.
-- How exactly did Mitchell discover Kemp and Lucy's facility?
-- Sinead Keenan's a good actress, but does anyone else find Nina extremely irritating now? She's another character I'd prefer to see the back of because she's turned into a very sour, grumpy person. I know this was mainly a result of her arc this year, but the George/Nina relationship stopped being interesting to me weeks ago. I preferred the Sam/Molly setup for George.
28 FEBRUARY 2010: BBC3, 9PM / BBC HD, 10.55PM
