After enjoying last year's excellent pilot, I was looking forward to the full series of Being Human. If you don't know, it's the tale of a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire living under the same roof in modern-day Bristol. I've already written about it after seeing it at a screening at the BFI last week, but I was wondering whether it would be as much fun the second time around. It was. Hurrah!

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I read a review in The Guardian this morning, which described Being Human as a cross between Buffy and Hollyoaks. I can see the reviewer's point but I found that there was so much more to it than that.

The theme in this opening episode was how our three protagonists - Annie the ghost, Mitchell the vampire and George the werewolf - were dealing with their pasts and accepting them. It was a good way to start the series, because it was a whole new cast and things had to be tied up.

For Mitchell, there was the problem of Herrick, the area's lead vampire. We first saw him in flashback and found out he was the one who bit him (during World War II), but now, in modern-day Bristol, he's a high-ranking police officer. His task was to try and persuade Mitchell to join with the rest of the vampires as they started to rise again. The young vampire was resisting, and repeated his ?? of wanting to live normally with the humans. He had, he explained, abstained from feeding on humans, but every now and then he wavered - a hospital worker called Lauren came under his spell and he not only played hide the sausage with her but also feasted on her. Now she was back as a vampire and also trying to get Mitchell to turn to the dark side. In a tense scene, Mitchell was out on a date with another pretty hospital worker. During the date, he was wrestling with the need to feed with his need to belong in the human world. Too late - Lauren abducted her from the toilet and got her fill.

Housebound Annie, meanwhile, was shocked to find that her ex-fiance (who she hadn't seen since she died) was going to pay a visit to the house. She desperately wanted to see him, and for her to see her, but the appearance of his new girlfriend left her distraught and realising the need to move on.

Finally, George had to deal with is full-moon transformation. The abandoned room in the hospital's basement - where he usually goes to become a werewolf - was being refurbished, so he had to go home and transform in the living room. It was a pretty amazing scene - quite scary actually. Annie wanted to watch, and even though George didn't fancy it ("this is like when you were six, watching a cat having kittens") she stayed long enough to see what he went through every month. He (or it) totally trashed the place, and all the furniture from the pilot episode was gone and they new members of the cast had a fresh place to live in. It was a neat, visual way - based in plot - to freshen things up.

The first episode packed a hell of a lot in - some of the usual 'fantasy' genre stuff, but also delicious amounts of gore and humour (the scene where Mitchell and George were driving around a park, looking for a secluded place for him to 'change' was particularly funny).

As for the cast, Russell Tovey was really good as George (and quite camp and hammy too), Lenora Crichlow was playing her most sensitive role to date, and Aidan Turner was suitably tortured, swarthy and exceptionally attractive. They settled in well.

This has all the ingredients to become a really decent cult success. The writing is very sharp, with plenty of quality one-liners, and the characters are rooted more in reality than the pilot (something the writer had gone on record as saying he wanted to do). I read one preview of the show that questioned the series' momentum after the initial novelty of a ghost, vampire and werewolf living together wore off, but now the first, scene-setting episode is out of the way, I have faith that this will develop nicely.