death? You've seen it too - the corridor, with the men at the end, with sticks and ropes

[jencat]

Proof that whoever is running BBC3 is slightly loopy... the immensely irritating Phoo Action has been commissioned for six eps on the strength of an eye-bleeding pilot before it's even screened.  Two weeks after it was shown, I still haven't seen anyone particularly keen to watch the rest.

Last week's new pilot, Being Human, however... it took a while to get into gear, but a UK broadcaster making a programme where a vampire, werewolf and ghost share a flat and work as hospital porters? I wasn't holding out high hopes, and the fact that the vamp, Mitchell, bears an uncanny resemblance to Alex O'Laughlin in Moonlight, not encouraging.  But George, the werewolf,, is a slightly adorable nerdy genius verging on OCD, the werewolf effects are surprisingly old school, and Annie, the ghost, is a chipper little Yorkshire lass with understandable agoraphobia, who makes endless cups of tea she can't drink.  Cos she's, y'know, dead.

Mitchell is perfectly vamp-like... just highly unoriginal.  The black eyes effect is so overdone by now, it just has no impact.  And vamp evolution, yada yada, cribbed word for word from the Blade flicks methinks. But it was fun, and witty, and human and warm.  No, the writer has no idea what hospital porters actually do for a job (they don't wear scrubs or wash floors, which is all Mitchell and George do, cos, er, they're not docs or cleaners), but George's speech about there being two jugular veins, and Annie's throwaway line about what death really is - they were dealbreakers. 

Needless to say, there are precisely no plans to commission this one for a series.  Bugger.