Becoming Human

Lore & Background

Becoming Human continues the adventures of Adam, a 46-year-old vampire in the body of a 16-year-old teenager. Adam had been protected by his parents until they died of old age, then by Mitchell, Annie, George, and Nina. At his new school, he meets Christa, a werewolf hiding her condition, and Matt, a ghost who was murdered in the school's supply cupboard. The trio investigates Matt's murder, with suspects including school bully Danny Curtis, Brandy Mulligan, and Mr. Swan. A sub-plot involves a love triangle: Matt had a three-year unrequited crush on Christa, and Adam makes crude passes at her, though both deny feelings.

Reader's Guide

Becoming Human was published from 30 January until 20 March 2011 on the BBC Three Website, with a new episode each Sunday around 10 pm. It was produced by Zodiak Media group, Touchpaper Wales. All eight episodes were cut into a 50-minute special broadcast on BBC Three on 20 March 2011. The series included additional online clues such as mobile phone videos, suspect profiles, and blog entries. After the series ended, Craig Roberts appeared in Being Human episode 4x05 'Hold The Front Page'. Two blog messages in 2013 described the fate of Christa and Adam. An online clip showed Mr. Roe communicating from purgatory, promising revenge, leaving a possible opening for a second series, though chances are highly improbable as the last series of Being Human aired in early 2013.

Did You Know?

• The series was filmed at Barry Comprehensive School.
• Matt's body was hidden in a supply cupboard.

The Unlikely Housemates

Being Human, created and written by Toby Whithouse, debuted on BBC Three in 2009 with a premise that sits squarely at the intersection of flatshare comedy and horror drama. The central conceit is deceptively simple: supernatural creatures of various kinds exist in the same world as ordinary people, and three of them have chosen to share a house and attempt to pass as unremarkable residents. In the pilot, a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire move into a Bristol property and discover a deceased woman's lingering spirit already occupies the space. Rather than lurking in castles or forests, these beings hold low-profile jobs as hospital porters, navigate domestic disputes, and wrestle with the daily grind of trying to fit in. The tone balances levity with genuine menace, as the trio is perpetually threatened with exposure, persecution, and the relentless pull of their own predatory natures. Whithouse's writing treats the supernatural not as spectacle but as a condition to be managed, grounding the fantastical in something deeply and recognisably human.

A Rotating Cast of Supernaturals

One of Being Human's most distinctive production challenges was the constant reshuffling of its core trio. The pilot cast Andrea Riseborough, Russell Tovey, and Guy Flanagan, but two of those three were swapped out before the series proper began, with Aidan Turner stepping into the vampire role and Lenora Crichlow taking over the ghost. Tovey, playing the werewolf, became the sole surviving original lead. From the third series onward, the ensemble kept expanding and contracting: Sinead Keenan joined as werewolf Nina Pickering, then Michael Socha and Damien Molony arrived in series four as a new werewolf and vampire respectively, and Kate Bracken rounded out the fifth-series cast as a ghost. Departures were equally frequent. Turner's exit was announced in March 2011, Tovey departed after the first episode of series four to commit to his own show Him & Her, and Keenan confirmed in January 2012 that she had not filmed a single scene for the fourth series and would simply vanish from the narrative off-screen.

From Bristol to the Welsh Coast

The first two series anchored their story in Totterdown, a district of Bristol, England, giving the show a distinctly Southwestern flavour. When the third series arrived, the production relocated roughly twenty-five miles across the River Severn to Barry, in Wales, a shift that subtly altered the show's geographic and cultural texture without changing its fundamental domestic setting. The broadcast schedule followed a steady annual rhythm on BBC Three: series two premiered in January 2010, series three in January 2011, and series four in February 2012, with the BBC confirming a fourth season just one day after the third's final episode aired. The fifth and final series began in February 2013, and the network made the decision to end the run explicit, announcing on 7 February 2013 that no further seasons would follow. The series closed with its final episode on 10 March 2013. Despite its modest five-season run, Being Human became one of the most-watched programmes on the BBC's iPlayer streaming platform, a testament to its broad appeal beyond the live broadcast audience.

Managing the Monster Within

Each supernatural type in Being Human carries a specific, deeply personal burden that drives the narrative forward. The vampire's struggle is drawn as a kind of addiction: he must constantly resist the urge to feed on human blood, a temptation that threatens to overwhelm his carefully maintained restraint. The werewolf's challenge is twofold—he must control his monthly transformations so that no one is killed and the affliction is not transmitted to others, while simultaneously maintaining a kind of denial, speaking of his wolf nature as if it belonged to someone entirely different. The ghost's ordeal is more existential: she must confront the isolation and loneliness of her post-mortem existence and uncover the reason she has remained tethered to the earthly world rather than moving on. By the second series, these individual struggles compound. The vampire inherits responsibility for a scattered local vampire community, the werewolf must navigate intimacy after accidentally passing on his curse, and the ghost faces the malignant attention of a hostile entity dwelling in the afterlife. A mysterious research organisation, possibly called CenSSA, adds yet another layer of institutional threat to their precarious lives.