Being Human: Season 2

Being Human returns for a gripping second season as vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner), werewolf George (Russell Tovey), and ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) encounter new enemies in their fight to lead something close to normal lives. It’s tough being supernatural. Mitchell’s romance with a feisty doctor is disrupted by a vampire community in disarray. George’s relationship with a new girlfriend is undermined by an uncontrollable twist in his werewolf existence. Annie has a brutal reminder that life as a spirit is full of challenges. All three are threatened by CenSSA, a religious organization committed to the destruction or conversion of supernatural freaks, operated by the mysterious Professor Jaggat and the sinister, cold-hearted Kemp. Just when your inner demons might be conquered, it’s the outer demons who won’t go away. Fans will pounce on the second season of Being Human, the beloved series about a trio of supernatural beings--a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost--who just want to lead normal lives. In the first episode, George (the lycanthrope, played by Russell Tovey) is trying to make his relationship with Nina (Sinead Keenan) work, only he doesn't know that he's passed his curse on to her; rakishly handsome Mitchell (the bloodsucker, Adrian Turner) meets a new doctor at the hospital and feels an immediate attraction; and ever-chipper Annie (the specter, Lenora Crichlow) sets out to get a job. Unfortunately for them, a gaunt fanatic named Kemp wants to destroy them and all their kind. The series seeks to juggle domestic story lines about relationships and family with grand conspiracies and bloody murders. The result never meshes--in one scene, Mitchell conspires with a police chief to cover up vampire murders, and in another he, George, and Annie are flopped on the couch, chatting like college freshmen about having sex. Either sequence could be enjoyable, but trying to slam them together undercuts both. It doesn't help that the characters squeal and whine like sullen teenagers half the time. Fortunately, the cast manages to rise above the writing to exude genuine charm and the production values are strong--the designers clearly relish every opportunity for gruesomeness. Being Human: Season Two has only a small handful of extras, but there are eight episodes instead of the first season's six. --Bret Fetzer