'Being Human' times 2: U.K. version, U.S. version

Ever watch two TV shows that are exactly the same

and

totally different?

Whoa! Cosmic paradox?

Nah, it's a matter of accent.

Monday, Syfy will premiere its tingle-and-tickle-a-minute horro-soap-omedy Being Human, a Friends-meets-Stephen King look at three twentysomething neo-slacker housemates whose daily round of angst - over love, money, and career - is complicated by one huge fact: They're also monsters.

Aidan (Sam Witwer) is a vampire, Josh (Sam Huntington) a werewolf, while the charming, self-effacing Sally (Meaghan Rath) literally has been erased - she's a ghost.

Hang back a few days and tune in to BBC America on Saturdays to catch - Being Human, a Friends-meets-Stephen King look at . . .

Except that these roomies have British accents. Being Human, a Canadian-American production, is one of three scripted shows this season remade from British hits.

(BBC America says the original will return for its third season in the near, yet-to-be-announced future.)

The teen sex-drugs-'n'-iPod dramedy Skins, premiering Monday on MTV, and Showtime's superb William H. Macy-powered Shameless, which premiered Sunday, were also spun out of gold first minted across the pond.

Which brings us to the eternal question: Why remake them, if the original shows are so good? (They are.)

"I think the new version will reach a much, much bigger audience," says Rob Pursey, executive producer of both versions of Being Human. "That was Syfy's prerogative."

Translation: It's easier to spend millions on a new show than to convince more Americans they won't contract a deadly disease if they watch people with British accents.

Pursey, a Brit whose previous TV credits include The Vice and Murderland, says Being Human screams for a new audience because it "breaks free of the standard genre constraints. It's more ambitious than a straightforward horror piece."

Pursey adds that Being Human attracts a marketer's dream demographic, "a fairly younger, slightly more adventurous audience - including women."

The transition from British to American TV isn't so easy: Witness 2003's Coupling, NBC's disastrous attempt to clone a racy sitcom by making a slavish, scene-by-scene copy.

The key to success is creative re-creation, says Jeremy Carver, who translated Being Human for domestic consumption with creative partner, wife, and fellow executive producer Anna Fricke.

Carver points out that the first season of the British show had only six one-hour episodes, while they have 13 43-minute episodes to play with for Syfy.

"I don't see it as making a better version or an American version, I see it as expanding on a great idea," he says.

Fricke continues his thought. "We decided to expand on the characters' backstory," she says. "We had a lot of what-ifs: 'What would this person look like 20 years ago - heck, 100 years ago?' ", in the case of the vampire.

A recurrent problem is the anxiety of influence: how to make a fresh show, yet stay faithful to the original without copying it.

Rath, who plays Sally the ghost on Syfy's version, says she watched only two episodes of the original.

"I was worried that [British actor Lenora Crichlow's] performance might rub off on me," she says. "I watched it to get a sense of the tone . . . how dark it was and how the humor played off the horror."

Carver and Fricke were concerned that the show's darkness and its thematic edge might be lost in translation.

"There's an appetite, whether it be in Americans themselves or the network executives who want to please them, to go slightly less dark," says Carver.

"We wanted to make sure that we kept it as edgy as possible," Fricke chimes in. "British humor pushes the envelope more, and it's certainly darker."

Being Human, the couple say, can't have a happy ending. "There is a lot of joy and humanity in the show," says Fricke, "but ultimately they never really will have a normal life. They'll never be human."

Not reassuring for an audience used to tidy endings, says Pursey. "Americans are more hungry for closure," he says. "And I've made a career out of avoiding it."