Being Human: Season Three Blu-ray Review

Posted April 22nd, 2011 by Brandon A. DuHamel

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Video Codec: VC-1
Resolution: 1080i/60
Audio Codec: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Subtitles: English
Region: ABC (Region-Free)
Rating: Not Rated
Discs: 3
Studio: BBC
Blu-ray Release Date: May 3, 2011
List Price: $59.98

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Overall

The Series

Video Quality

Audio Quality

Supplemental Materials

Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures

(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)

The Series

It’s the original and, all due respect to SyFy Network, still the best. Being Human: Season Three is BBC’s popular supernatural drama that has become so successful it has spawned a U.S. remake of lesser quality.

The third season finds our supernatural heroes fleeing their home in Bristol after ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) is sucked into purgatory and vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) goes on an angry rampage on a train killing over thirty people on one car. Moving to a small town in Wales, the friends try to regain sanity and peace, hoping to pick up the pieces in a rented Bed & Breakfast, where they can restart their attempt at being human. It all seemed so easy, but things become evermore complicated and complex for the four friends.

Werewolves George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) find themselves expecting a child after unexpectedly mating during one of their transformations. Will it be normal, or a beast? After rescuing Annie from purgatory, Mitchell and Annie begin a courtship that seems doomed to failure, especially with his dark secret of the “boxcar tunnel massacre” between them. With the prophecy that he will be killed by a werewolf as his payment for rescuing Annie haunting him and two new werewolves arriving in town, things really begin to heat up, but not as much as when Mitchell’s nemesis Herrick (Jason Watkins), believed to be dead by werewolf, shows up.

It’s another spectacular season of Being Human – darker, sexier, and scarier than ever. There can be only one original, and this it.

Video Quality

The HD production looks pretty good, coming to Blu-ray in a 1080i/60 encodement. There’s some softness to the look of the series overall and often the image gets a little bogged down in video noise, but there is still good detail, solid blacks, nice shadow delineation, and natural flesh tones.

Audio Quality

Sadly, Being Human is still being crippled on Blu-ray with a mid-bitrate lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack that doesn’t do much at all to bring out the moodiness and atmosphere of the series. The stereo imaging is a bit narrow, dynamics sound a bit claustrophobic and there’s a slight hint of crackle in dialogue.

Supplemental Materials

The best extra for fans of Being Human will be the Extended Cast Interviews, which allows a look at the stars talking about their character’s development over this new season.

Deleted Scenes (1.78:1; 1080i/60; 0:11.59)
Extended Cast Interviews (1.78:1; 1080i/60; 0:21.43)
Sinead’s Set Tour (1.78:1; 1080i/60; 0:05.15) – Sinead Keenan (Nina) gives a behind-the-scenes tour of the show’s new set.

The Definitive Word

Overall: