Ellen Gray: Fur or fangs, they're still just 'Being Human'

SO MANY VAMPIRES, so little time.

Between "Twilight," HBO's "True Blood" and the WB's upcoming "Vampire Diaries," I'd begun to feel overwhelmed by the undead.

Then along came BBC America's "Being Human" to change my mind.

The latest of the digital-cable channel's supernatural offerings premieres at 9 p.m. tomorrow with the introduction of unlikely twentysomething housemates: a vampire, a werewolf and the girl who haunts the place they rent.

Mitchell (Aidan Turner) is one of those vamps with a conscience we hear so much about. He and George (Russell Tovey), a mild-mannered werewolf, work in a hospital, but Annie (Lenora Crichlow) mostly hangs around the house, mourning Owen (Greg Chillin), the fiancé left behind when she died.

Not that he won't be dropping in from time to time: He's the guys' landlord.

Though there's some sort of vampire conspiracy afoot that Mitchell, who's sworn off the hard stuff, seems to be resisting, both the drama and the comedy in "Being Human" is less about the Big Questions than it is about the small ones: Can a werewolf date? Can the dead and the undead live side by side with the living without being discovered? Is there stupidity about the opposite sex after death?

If the best science fiction is ultimately about what it is that makes us human, the same might be said for stories of the supernatural: You can dress us up - in fangs, fur or a bedsheet - but you can't really take us anywhere we haven't already been. *

Ellen Gray is at San Diego Comic-Con. Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com or check for Comic-Con updates at go.philly.com/ellengray and twitter.com/elgray.