“Tom, the “Old Ones” are gonna be here any-day now; if they’re not already. To stop them we might have to… do terrible things!”
“We can raid the dressing up box, and pretend to be human, but ultimately what’s the point. Sooner or later we all go back to being the monsters we truly are.”
When it comes to episodes of discovery few do it better than Being Human, the mix of gruesomeness with humour is like no other. The penultimate episode of the series unravels the secrets that have been alluded to all series. Why does adult Eve want baby Eve dead? What’s Cutler’s plan? And can Hal resist the temptation to drink blood after 55 years? Is Tom heading for something nasty? And can Annie really protect Eve; or is she even meant to? So many questions, and now’s the time for answers…
With the Old Ones arrival imminent, we’re faced with seeing what monsters our characters truly could be, as Eve shows us her present; our future and our characters at their most darkest, in a Christmas Carol meets White Christmas type vain. Its a credit to the writer Toby Whithouse that even though we don’t “physically” see the enemies Tom and Hal have become in the future, the storytelling is convincing enough to make us believe the characters we know as different. gentler characters, really could be THAT bad.
Hal of the past “made” Cutler into a vampire and grotesquely killed Cutlers wife and made him unwittingly drink her blood, for which Cutler gets his revenge by doing the same with Alex to Hal. The Hal of the past is cruel, and sadistic, and is a dictator to Eve’s generation, who inflicts pain, suffering and segregation. Meanwhile the future Tom is described by Eve as; “A cold man. difficult to like if I’m honest!” After the killing of humans broke him as a person, Tom is reduced to dog fighting, which nicely links up with Cutler’s plan to have Tom transform at the club with humans, thus starting the chain of events that Eve describes to Annie. While Annie supposedly withers away after watching her friends die one after another. The future really does sound bleak for our group.
This was Cutler and Eve’s episode as the two characters who have remained the most enigmatic in terms of “reason,” now reveal their motives. Eve is like the John Connor of Being Human always fighting to save the future, where as Cutler wants to avenge the past because of the creature Hal has made him. A wonderful performance by all the cast, especially Andrew Gower as Cutler, a character I had my doubts about, but the pay-off has been worth it. Gina Bramhill as the newly revealed Eve comes into her own as the light firmly shines on her character. Damien Molony has played the two sides of Hal which such convincing ease, and Michael Socha’s Tom, not only delivers some of the best comedy lines, but is so adorable which makes it so easy to see if he did kill those humans, the effect on him would be immense.
I’ve described Eve as a soldier before, and I still believe that whether or not she has shown Annie the true future, or staged it to convince Annie, remains to be seen. But I still believe she “is” good and trying to protect. Is Eve herself misguided? Has she been duped in some way by the Old Ones in the shape of Mark Gatiss? So many questions that mean a spectacular finale is in the offing. And as for Annie…with knowledge of the future and the world to come she knows what she needs to do; “Remember a moment will come when you have to choose between letting me live, and letting me die. If you want to stop this happening you have to let me die,” Eve says. Annie singing “Que Sera, Sera,” tells us she wishes that the future wasn’t hers to see after-all. What a choice for poor Annie!
» As an aside: Loved the cinematography especially the camera zoom of the hallway in purgatory and the lighting in some of the scenes with Alex and Hal.
