How Being Human bit back to become BBC3's biggest hit
"The facts were these: three years ago, the BBC was on the hunt for a new twentysomething drama in the vein of This Life. Whithouse and his team were developing a flatshare idea about three characters – an agoraphobic, a sex addict and a person with anger issues – which was "going completely nowhere". In a fit of frustration, he half-joked that George, the angry guy, should turn into a werewolf, just to give them some story. And then a bulb went off. "It then seemed quite natural that Mitchell should be a vampire and Annie should be a ghost, because their human personalities lent themselves to those specific archetypes very well."
This coincided with BBC3 commissioning a round of drama pilots in 2008, and having been pretty pleased with what they'd come up with, Whithouse was "completely deflated and terribly, terribly disappointed" when before any had even aired, the channel decide that only the woeful Jamie Hewlett adaptation Phoo Action would be picked up for a series. But when they did air, strange things started to happen. An online petition – started by Reading Chronicle journalist Narin Bahar – in support of Being Human gathered over 3,000 signatures; Facebook groups swelled and messageboards exploded."
- The Guardian, January 2010
