Fangs For The Memory

Welcome, one and all, to Department 108.

I'll start this blog by letting you into a secret. I don't like Sundays.

They're pretty tiresome, not least because there's very little to do. Actually, that's a lie - there's plenty to do these days, as most shops, restaurants, bars and so on are open. And if you're like me, there's a never-ending list of little jobs that you probably should do when the opportunity arises, but don't. Like de-cluttering the wardrobe, or sorting out important business that you promised yourself you'd do by the end of 2008, until Christmas and New Year got in the way. But if you decide that none of these things appeal, and you'd like to spend the day 'chilling out' (or whatever modern phrase you might choose to justify essentially doing nothing all day long), then sooner or later your attention may drift towards the television.

Here's the problem - television on Sunday is rubbish. Even in the multi-channel age, where realistically there ought to be something on one of the hundreds of channels available that might stave off that nagging sense of Seventh Day Ennui, you'll still find yourself wading through all manner of nonsense. Thankfully, this is where something like Sky+ comes into its own, and all those missed episodes of Come Dine With Me are finally devoured. But when you've worked through to the end of those, then what? By prime-time, BBC and ITV are conspiring to lull you into an early slumber with a cosy period drama - unless they're showing celebrities skating in spangly jumpsuits, though that usually has a similar effect.

So you can imagine how pleased and surprised I was to find something decent to watch on a Sunday night with BBC Three's new drama Being Human. It's 'high concept' television at its very best - a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost share a house. But you need more than a high concept to make a programme like this work, and thankfully writer Toby Whithouse manages to tread the fine line between drab twenty-something relationship drama and full-on sci-fi/horror series. On the one hand, there's Mitchell (Aidan Turner), an 'on the wagon' vampire torn between his blood-crazed brethren and ordinary humans - and the seeds of an ongoing story about a vampire conspiracy. On the other, there's ghostly Annie (Lenora Crichlow), who has to cope with the fact that the man she loves has moved on. And somewhere in the middle, there's George - a fantastic performance from the ever-reliable Russell Tovey as a neurotic hospital porter who turns very hairy at breaks things when it comes to his 'time of the month'. There are so many dull genre shows around at the moment - ITV1's lacklustre Demons, for example, whose only saving grace is Philip Glenister as a kind of Dirty Harry-meets-Van Helsing - that it's great to find one that manages to be genuinely engaging. If the rest of the series can live up to the promise of this first episode, this should be one to watch.