Having seen just more episode of this series I can say that I have given up with it totally.
I might be being a little harsh here, but the second episode of this series, billed as the British Buffy, had plot holes big enough to drive a bus through! In the first draft of this post (yes I do some times draft these things!) I ripped in to the scripts failings, but since then I’ve mellowed a bit and in any case I’ve now I’ve discovered two new series that have similar sort of themes (well almost) and are far, far better.
The series I talk of here are the interesting American (or maybe Canadian) import Sanctuary and the fantastic new British drama Being Human. Both while being about supernatural beings (vampires, werewolves etc.) are there own shows and don’t try and follow the Buffy Formula. This is a good thing, while buffy was very, very good, it’s already been done and if you try and copy it, you just going to look like a cheep rip off, which is just one of the problems with Demons.
Admittedly Sanctuary, does borrow in theme from quite a few other series, but it is such a mix that I think it actually works. It could be best described as being one part Heros, one part X-Files and one part Buffy/Angel. In this new have our supernatural beings as both good and bad guys, although from the 3 episodes I’ve seen so far it looks like there are more bad guys in the normals than the supernaturals.
The series has a lot for former members of the Stargate SG1 production team working on it, most notably Amanda Tapping (sorry I’ve got to say that while she was already beautiful as a blonde, she is fantastic looking as a brunette).
The series is apparently shot exclusively on green screen sets, which makes some sense given the sort of sets that they might otherwise have to build, but I’m not sure that having no sets at all is the way to go. Why do it for a the regular sets that they use in every episode?
Also the whole thing is shot using the now legendary Red One camera, this means that if they use the full capabilities of the camera they could shoot the show in 4k which has 4 times the resolution of HD! This is also the same camera that is used to shoot a lot of movies, which should give you some idea of the sort of resolution we are dealing with here!
I think that Sanctuary, while not being in quite the same league as Buffy, is defiantly what I would call appointment TV.
So on to the home grown, Being Human. I’ve got to say that from the trailers I saw for this I thought it was going to be a comedy. I was very wrong on that count. It’s billed as a comedy drama, but it is definitely not a laugh a minute sort of thing. Not that this is a criticism, not at all.
The series is based around a vampire, werewolf and ghost sharing a house in Bristol (yay, My home town). It has more of a ‘soap opera’ feel to it. There are hints of some great uprising of Vampires, but in the first few episodes it’s just how the three of them try to live a normal life in among us humans.
It is very well done and the fact that it is shoot in my home town adds an extra dimension for me, I can play spot the location!
This is definitely must see TV for me, so you can expect to see more posts about this series as it continues.