Genre: Horror | Drama | Comedy

Air Date/Time: March 17 at 9/8c

Network: BBC America

Created by: Toby Whithouse

Director: Daniel O’Hara

Writer: Tom Grieves

Summary:

In an old B&B in a sleepy seaside town, we join Annie (Lenora Crichlow) and her housemates Tom (Michael Socha) and Hal (Damien Molony). With a newborn baby to look after, it’s never been more difficult to live life under-the-radar as a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire. There are also other vampires to deal with: lurking in every corner of society, waiting for the Old Ones, powerful older vampires, to arrive and take over the world with brutal force. Worse yet, there’s a malevolent ghost on the loose and someone’s seeking to expose the existence of werewolves – not to mention all the diapers that need changing.

I hate feeling uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need “comfortable”. I enjoy (fictional) zombies and explosions and scariness and battles between good and evil, and I usually don’t care much for shows without some sort of edge. But humiliation is really hard for me to watch. You know, when a character is put in a position that you know will turn out badly, that will make them look bad or act badly or feel bad about themselves. Laughs at someone else’s expense are not funny to me, and nice regular people set up for a fall don’t entertain me.

And that is why I can’t watch big portions of this episode. Well, admittedly, I kept the sound on, and I just reduced the screen size, so I was actually still watching it, just on a smaller screen so I was a little more removed from it, and didn’t feel it quite so keenly.

The thing is, that’s what makes it brilliant; it is a really well done episode, particularly the mean parts, because it helps to continue to define the characters.

We meet a new character, Kirby, whom we saw coming over to our side from the other side at the end of last week’s episode. We find out nearly right away that he isn’t as nice as one might think, and he specializes in making everyone feel horrible, especially about themselves, so this discussion really isn’t as spoilery as you might think.

Due to the nature of this episode, the cast are given a broad range, and handle it deftly. It’s helpful to us, and it’s helpful to each other, to see this range. I thought that last week’s episode pretty well set up Our Gang for the rest of the season, not realizing that they would of course need a bit more growth than that to forge a truly strong bond. I suspect they may yet have a ways to go. Obviously, then, kudos once more to Damien Molony, Michael Socha, and Lenora Crichlow for achingly good performances.

Things you may be interested to know, or actually need to know, going into this episode:

You need to know that the “Box Tunnel Murderer” refers to the massacre by Mitchell and his friend of several people on a train. A scapegoat was found who was not a vampire. Hal knows all about this, and I don’t remember ever seeing him told nor have we been given any reason to think he would know. Either I’m missing something or there’s a bit of a hole in the script.

It might be helpful for you to know that “rota” in British means “schedule” in American. It comes up A LOT in this episode.

And you might be interested to know, since most of you won’t have firsthand knowledge, that they got the look of this man from the 1970s completely right. Well done, wardrobe and hair!

This episode is another good step for the season – as long as they swear to me that they won’t do the uncomfortable bit again. I love that the show is continuing to progress and hasn’t become set or complacent. Well done, continuing to be a lovely supernatural show, with a bit of bite.

I give Being Human: Season 4, Episode 4 “A Spectre Calls” Four Out of Five Stars.