TV REVIEW: Being Human - The Last Broadcast

And so the final episode of Being Human comes to pass, with blood, tears and a song and dance number, it's time to say goodbye to Hal, Tom and Alex.

The final episode, with its apt title The Last Broadcast, brought in pretty much everything that had ever made Being Human great in the first place, with a little bit of Buffy and Supernatural thrown in. Hatch (Phil Davis) has risen, Hal (Damien Molony) is on a bit of a rampage, Tom (Michael Socha) is preparing to kill his best friend and Alex (Kate Bracken) is back in her coffin with her decomposing corpse for company. With the Devil bringing about his very own apocalypse, can the trio reunite long enough to stop him? As the Devil observed way back in the first episode, a trinity is bad news for him, and so it proves.

Opening with Hal performing Putting on the Ritz amidst newly vamped victims was a ballsy move, but set the tone for this offbeat finale with its mixture of horror and comedy. Molony clearly has a ball playing the evil side of Hal, though the recent introduction of a split personality proved to be a bit jarring in this final episode. However, when it leads to lines like 'Oh I was good again. It was ghastly', I can definitely cope. This was one of the areas where Buffy's influence shone most clear; as I observed in the previous review, the split personality of a vampire was toyed with frequently in Buffy and Angel and again, the battle for good Hal raged here. We also got a Buffy-style action sequence thrown in for good measure with the excellent fight between Tom and Hal.

Tom and Hal's relationship was one of the strongest points of Series Four, their completely different outlooks on life making for some brilliant comedy, as well as your requisite dramatic conflict. The conflict was brought very much to the fore here. A lot of Tom's character development has been about his innocence and naivety so it was good to be reminded of just how much of a badass he is. Likewise with Hal, we hear often about his dangerous, Kia-Ora side so it's refreshing to actually see some of this before the series ends. That's pretty much it for the action of the episode though as Whithouse opts to go for a more quiet, character-driven approach to the end of the world.

Each character is given a chance to live their lives again, without their supernatural curses and it is in these quieter moments that this episode truly excels. Davis proves to be a quietly menacing antagonist and has a great scene with each of our heroes as the Devil creates another world for them. Bracken's alternative was particularly heartbreaking as she is faced with the choice of not going on her fateful date with Hal whilst Tom's was really sweet, bringing back one of the best guest stars the series has had in Ellie Kendrick's Allison. Hal's origin story led to a welcome return for Leo, but each separate choice for the three characters were bittersweet. Part of you wished for them to live happily without each other, whilst the rest of you begged to get the three of them back together because that is how it is supposed to be, as Hal observes.

Thankfully, the three do decide to turn their backs on the Devil and fight together. Now, all credit to Toby Whithouse for not taking this in the expected direction; with the binding ritual for the Devil involving the deaths of all three heroes, I spent the entire episode dreading that this would happen. Thankfully, Whithouse decides to go with a bit of a twist. The gang fight off the Devil and through an expected self-sacrifice by Rook (well, he had to redeem himself somehow didn't he?), they defeat him. The dispossession of the Devil though, was more than a little related to Supernatural no? I mean, demons possess humans with black smoke through their mouths and exit in the same way. A small point, but it was a distraction.

And so we come to the ending; seemingly the gang is back together, they finally got the humanity that they so craved and settle down to watch the Antiques Roadshow. Then, we got a rather lovely pan across the fireplace to the mementoes of the previous residents of Honolulu Heights; Mitchell's fingerless gloves, George's Star of David, Annie's teacup, Nina's scan, Eve's bib before resting on the newest incumbents including the origami wolf that Hatch created in Tom's ideal world. 

Now any fan of Blade Runner will know the ambiguity of origami animals but for me, it's the camera tilt that suggests all is not what it seems. When we think back to Hal's ideal world, it could be that the Devil listened to him when he said that he should have put them all together. "It's incomplete without them!" So we're left with question; are the gang all human again and happy? Or has the Devil actually won and just left them in their own happy ideal world? Personally, I want so badly to go with the former, it just seems the more fitting end to the series, to have them all human again. That and I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

With previous alumni moving on to bigger and better things, let's hope the same can be said for Molony, Bracken and Socha; they've been a real credit to this series and won a lot of us die-hards over. Being Human has always done finales well and this was no different, tugging the heartstrings, tickling the funny-bone and providing a truly fitting end to what has been, despite a few flaws, a wonderful series. And so we say goodbye to Hal, Tom and Alex... It would have been nice to spend more time with you.

- Becky

You can read all of Becky's previous Being Human reviews here.

Follow Becky on Twitter @beckygracelea or on her blog beckygracelea.wordpress.com

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