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" The fourth series of Being Human could so easily have been a spectacular failure - with just one original cast member left standing, show creator Toby Whithouse was faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of replacing old favourites while simultaneously keeping a four-year-old drama fresh and relevant. But Being Human triumphed out of adversity, with Whithouse and his team of writers using the cast &amp;#039;crisis&amp;#039; as an opportunity to refresh and revive a flagging series by returning it to its roots. The end result was a wonderful blend of warm humour and supernatural drama. Now the pressure is on for Whithouse and co not to drop the ball - this writer&amp;#039;s hopes were high that series five would again strike the right balance and avoid sliding back into the interminable grimness that defined much of this show&amp;#039;s third year. &amp;#039;The Trinity&amp;#039; picks up almost precisely where series four left off, with an unkempt, blood-hungry Hal (Damien Molony) tied to a chair and despairing at Tom&amp;#039;s poor housekeeping. Hal&amp;#039;s loveable werewolf chum and new Honolulu Heights resident Alex (Kate Bracken) finally set the vampire free, on the basis that he swear on Eve&amp;#039;s disused bib to control his bloodlust - a nice nod to the events of last year&amp;#039;s finale and proof that our characters haven&amp;#039;t entirely forgotten about absent Annie and her adopted child.  With a new lead trio, there&amp;#039;s a new dynamic at work here - whereas Annie was the house&amp;#039;s mother hen, this new setup more closely resembles series one&amp;#039;s dynamic of the 20-something flatshare - with Hal and Tom sharing an awkward blokey relationship and Hal and Alex snapping at each other to hide the true emotions that might be bubbling beneath, whether they be romantic feelings or lingering resentments and guilt over her death. Alex and Tom&amp;#039;s relationship is the one that we didn&amp;#039;t get much chance to touch on last year - they have something of a brother/sister dynamic here, less complicated than her interactions with Hal, though his insistence at acting &amp;#039;gentlemanly&amp;#039; at all times does occasionally rub up the feisty spirit the wrong way.  Having taken a rather substantial amount of time off to deal with all manner of &amp;quot;supernatural nonsense&amp;quot;, Hal and Tom find themselves sacked from their old jobs at the caf\u00E9 and badly in need of a new source of income - enter the Barry Grand hotel and its one particularly unpleasant resident, the poisonous pensioner Captain Hatch (Phil Davis). Meanwhile, sinister Dominic Rook (Steven Robertson) is also back on the prowl, having been tasked by the powers-that-be with keeping the supernatural a secret. Rook wants an unwilling Hal to lead the vampire race in a new age of co-operation, but before he can put his grand plan into action, his department is shut down by the Home Secretary - played by series creator Toby Whithouse in a neat cameo. Rook appears to ignore his orders and carry on with his mission regardless - we&amp;#039;d thought him a villain but could he in fact turn out to be an uneasy ally for our heroes, helming them to preserve their secret? Either way, that knowledge of the paranormal runs this deep in the government raises the question of how long that secret can really be kept.  And there&amp;#039;s more still going on in this packed premiere - David Brent-esque buffoon Ian Cram has an unfortunate run-in with Hal that leads to him being badly injured in a hit-and-run and, desperate to save him, Hal transforms Cram into a vampire and locks him in the basement of Honolulu Heights. It did occur to us that Hal - who knows better than most how torturous the life of a vampire can be - should&amp;#039;ve known that it might&amp;#039;ve been kinder to let Cram die rather than let him &amp;#039;live&amp;#039; as a vicious blood-sucker. Alex and Tom have much the same question and it&amp;#039;s eventually implied that Hal - consciously or otherwise - created Cram so he&amp;#039;d have a new &amp;#039;villain&amp;#039; to fight against, because if he can&amp;#039;t act the hero, Hal might have to face the realisation that he is the real bad guy - a satisfying twist. It&amp;#039;s not immediately clear what purpose Cram - or should that be &amp;#039;Crumb&amp;#039; - will serve in future episodes, but since he looks set to recur, let&amp;#039;s hope that actor Colin Hoult tones it down just a little - his performance occasionally strays a little too far into the cartoonish.  As if all that weren&amp;#039;t enough, Whithouse&amp;#039;s script - like his series four opener last year - leaps quick and often between multiple time periods, flashing back to 1900s Northern France - a time and place where Hal associated himself with werewolf queen Lady Catherine (Victoria Ross) and ghostly &amp;quot;necromancer&amp;quot; Emil (Jeremy Swift). It appears that the notion of a ghost/werewolf/vampire &amp;#039;trinity&amp;#039; reverberates through history - there&amp;#039;s our primary Being Human regulars, plus Hal&amp;#039;s time spent living with Pearl the ghost and Leo the werewolf. Is the recurrence of this type of triad intended to imply something? Could there be a supernatural reason why a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire keep coming together in this way? &amp;#039;The Trinity&amp;#039; certainly seems to suggest that a trio of this sort is destined to destroy the devil. We wouldn&amp;#039;t put it past Toby Whithouse to have come up with a neat plot explanation for this show&amp;#039;s real-life need to stick to a certain cast formula.  And speak of the devil... last year&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Hold the Front Page&amp;#039; hinted at a larger supernatural world with its introduction of a succubus and talk of demons, but here we delve deeper still, with hints at the larger role that the Devil might play in the world of Being Human - creating the vampire race for one thing. There&amp;#039;s also the exciting development that Satan is not just an abstract concept of evil, but is able to take powerful and unsettling physical form through possession, a form able to lash out at werewolves, vampires and ghosts alike. The climactic revelation that Hatch - who&amp;#039;s done little all episode but snipe from the sidelines - is the Devil is a little predictable though. You don&amp;#039;t hire Phil Davis to play some random pensioner - but casting Satan as a bitter, crippled old man who manipulates with cruel whispers is a uniquely Being Human take on the Anti-Christ.  As is clear from the length of this review, &amp;#039;The Trinity&amp;#039; is a rather busy series premiere, but for the most part, Whithouse&amp;#039;s opener successfully juggles its multiple plotlines in an engaging fashion. There&amp;#039;s also reliably strong performances from our leads. Hal&amp;#039;s bloodlust and ongoing struggles mean he&amp;#039;s the focus of much of the episode&amp;#039;s drama, while Alex&amp;#039;s barely-hidden frustrations and her quest to pass on also mean Kate Bracken gets plenty to do in her first episode as a series regular. But while Tom gets plenty of funny lines (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry about the crying&amp;quot;), the sensitive lycanthrope initially feels a little like a bystander here since he doesn&amp;#039;t have his own internal drama to deal with. Thankfully a mutual sharing session later in the episode addresses this problem - once Alex learns of her body&amp;#039;s fate, Tom dives into his own little pocket of emotional turmoil in a scene that nicely builds on their newfound friendship. Perhaps most importantly though, this episode maintains last year&amp;#039;s winning balance between the dramatic and the comical. The new &amp;#039;trinity&amp;#039; work well together - though there wasn&amp;#039;t nearly enough Hal/Tom bromantic action this week for our liking - and we&amp;#039;re more than happy to follow Hal, Tom and Alex on the dark and funny rollercoaster ride that doubtless lies ahead.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/being-human/review/a455029/being-human-review-series-five-premiere-the-trinity/>