What if the gang on “Friends” were vampires, werewolves and ghosts? Sometimes the best way to create something original is to recombine the familiar in new and different ways. Take the well-worn TV notion of three unmarried singles sharing an apartment, and blend that with our current obsession with the supernatural and the undead, and you have “Being Human” (8 p.m., Saturday, BBC America), a surprising and frequently superb new series from Britain.

George (Russell Tovey), Mitchell (Aidan Turner) and Annie (Lenora Crichlow) aren’t your typical “Three’s Company” roommates. Annie may be chatty, insecure and too concerned about keeping tidy and making tea, but you’d be on edge too if you had just died and found yourself haunting the apartment you had shared with your fiancé. George and Mitchell work as hospital orderlies and look out for each other. That’s because George is a werewolf, prone to some pretty destructive behavior one night a month, and Mitchell is a handsome vampire who has been struggling with his thirst for blood ever since he “died” during World War I.

Gentle and often surprising humor undercuts the gothic nature of this far-fetched tale. But don’t go looking for “The Munsters.” The laughs come laden with pathos. New to the spectral sphere, Annie’s longing for her old life is both understandable and touching. It doesn’t help that her old beau happens to be their landlord and that he’s taken up with a rather trashy-looking operator of a tanning salon. “She’s orange,” complains Annie, who is herself quite invisible to most mortals.

• Complications may delay Jack’s ascension to the throne on the season finale of “Kings” (7 p.m., Saturday, NBC). I rather hate the cliché “the best show nobody’s watching,” but I think it applies, or rather applied, here.

Saturday’s highlights

• Clues point to a ritual killer on “Castle” (8 p.m., ABC).

• Peta Wilson stars in the 2009 shocker “Malibu Shark Attack” (8 p.m., SyFy).

• Scheduled on a two-hour “48 Hours Mystery” (8 p.m., CBS): Police develop second thoughts about the teen they put in prison.

• A broker faces violence at a posh banquet on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (8 p.m., NBC).

• Tales of isolation and endurance on “Alone in the Wild: Can I Survive?” (9 p.m., National Geographic).

• A road trip to remember on “Dirty Sexy Money” (9 p.m., ABC).

Sunday’s highlights

• Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (6 p.m., CBS): the paranoia-fueled gun bonanza; poisoned African lions; a profile of casino operator Steve Wynn.

• An unexpected alliance with Morgana on “Merlin” (7 p.m., NBC).

• A superhero (Tim Allen) returns for a new mission in the 2006 adventure “Zoom” (7 p.m., Fox).

• “Masterpiece Mystery!” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) presents “Miss Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?”

• Ray contemplates a sick day on “Hung” (9 p.m., HBO).

Cult choice

A cynical journalist retreats to a lighthouse only to derive inspiration from its many ghosts in the 1942 fantasy “Thunder Rock” (3 a.m., Sunday, TCM), starring Michael Redgrave and James Mason.