It’s the first series with the new cast, so does it feel like a new launch?
DM: I suppose it’s a different story, but it’s still Being Human, and it still retains the fundamental elements of the vampire, the werewolf, the ghost. What makes Being Human so special I think is that yes, these are extraordinary situations, but at the heart of it these are characters who love each other and need each other, and are trying to exist in a world that they don’t feel like they belong to, but they absolutely want to try and do good and overcome their disabilities or their superpowers, and to try and use them to save the world.
How do we kick off this series?
KB: We kick off where we left off. Hal’s tied to a chair…
DM: Just with a little more facial hair, just squeezed out for three weeks before we started.
KB: So he’s been in the chair for three weeks, and it’s Tom and Alex deciding whether or not it’s time to let him out, whether he’s safe or not.
DM: Our very first day they had to feed me mushed banana, and I hate bananas anyway, and Michael [Socha] was purposefully getting it all over my nose and my cheek, and there were eight takes of it. I was like ‘Surely we got it now?!’
K: It was nice to pick up where we left off so that we could get back into the story, but that first week was like, ‘Am I gonna be able to remember how to do this?’
Alex and Hal went on a date together before she was murdered, so will there be romance in the after-life?
KB: It’s rocky isn’t it…
DM: Technically I haven’t done anything wrong.
KB: No comment on that… (laughs). They become close mates, but I think that chance of romance is never fully gone, and living together in such close proximity, there’s always an element of that, and obviously there was an attraction there to begin with, but they wind each other up something awful.
DM: For me, Alex represents that bad Hal that he’s been trying to run away from, and every day he sees her, that is a victim that I am responsible for. So yes, I fancy her still, but there’s that push and pull, that struggle, because of what she represents to me.
KB: There’s a huge part of her that can’t let that go, and you do see that bickering come back between them, but she understands how much of a struggle this is for Hal, and it’s something he cant control, like an illness, so she is quite forgiving in that sense as well. There’s a big battle of emotions when it comes to Hal.
Annie was the mother figure of the house. Does Alex have a role?
KB: In a sense… I would say Alex does bring a sense of normality to the house, because I think these guys have been wrapped up in this supernatural world for a time, and she’s fresh to this world, so she can be a voice of reason at times. She sees Tom as a brother to her because obviously she’s not able to be with her own brothers anymore, and with Hal, it’s complicated…
BBC Three premieres Being Human’s fifth series on Sunday, February 3 at 10pm.
