Being Human: US

I am incredibly puzzled by one current phenomena of US TV: it seems that every original British TV show is re-made in US. Why?????? What for? (other than monetary purposes, I get this). There are also numerous re-makes of Asian and European films in Hollywood, but one of the arguments for these remakes is that "people don’t like subtitles". The argument always seemed ridiculous to me , but I have heard it repeated again and again, so there must be some truth in it. But British shows? The language is the same, the culture is almost identical, and an original is always better than a copy. I shudder imagining the day when Doctor Who is going to be re-made in US.

But then there is the case of "Being Human". I have a long and bumpy relationship with the show. I absolutely adored the original pilot with Guy Flanagan and was looking forward to the full show. But then the creators did a crazy thing and re-cast two of the main characters, replacing elegant and sophisticated Guy Flanagan with the actor who (for me) has neither looks nor acting ability, specifically, Aidan Turner (pictorial evidence of bad looks). I tried to watch the show with the new cast several times, but unfortunately Aidan Turner does nothing for me whatsoever no matter how hard I tried and I found the new Annie to be slightly annoying.

And now we have an US re-make of the show. Hoping against hope for resurrection of my “Being Human” interest, I decided to give it a chance and watched the first 4 episodes. On the positive side, Sam Witwer looks and acts much better than Aidan Turner (he does the pale and menacing vampire look extremely well), Sam Huntington is quite an adorkable specimen and Meaghan Rath is very cute. But the fact remains- I have watched 4 episodes and so far “being Human US” have been a plain copy of the British show. I am so undecided on this, I think I will try to watch more episodes in hope I will get to the parts I haven’t seen, after all, I do like all three of the actors very much. There is also Mark Pellegrino in the show , but he has hair of terrible yellow colour. Bishop, a 500-year old vampire and can’t get a good hairdresser?

They have changed all the names in the US version, changing Mitchell to Aidan (nice nod to the British show), George to Josh and Annie to Sally. Here I rant: I am not fond of all the diminutive name shortenings, Penny’s and Milly’s and such. And Sally is my least favourite of all. This is a totally subjective thing, of course, but I think I would never be able to take anyone with the name Sally seriously. It is like a female version of Billy. Why would someone name their daughter Sally? Because they don’t like her?

( Few promotional pictures )

PS: About original British Shows, I am awestruck by "Outcasts". But more on this later.