Ghosts (2019 TV series)

Ghosts
Promotional image
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Mathew Baynton Simon Farnaby Martha Howe-Douglas Jim Howick Laurence Rickard Ben Willbond
Directed by	Tom Kingsley
Starring	Charlotte Ritchie Kiell Smith-Bynoe Martha Howe-Douglas Mathew Baynton Simon Farnaby Lolly Adefope Laurence Rickard Ben Willbond Katy Wix Jim Howick Yani Xander
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	20 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer	Matthew Mulot
Editor	Mike Holliday
Running time	30 minutes
Production companies	Monumental Television Them There BBC
Release
Original network	BBC One
Original release	15 April 2019 (2019-04-15) – present

Ghosts is a British sitcom first broadcast on BBC One in April 2019. The series follows a collection of ghosts from different historical periods haunting a country house while sharing the house with its new living occupants. The series is written and performed by many of the cast members of Horrible Histories and Yonderland.^[1] The series also airs on HBO Max in the US.

The series is the first post-watershed comedy by the ensemble, although some television critics said that it was suitable for adults and children alike.^[2][3] Reviews of the series have been positive, with critics appreciating the high joke rate, the premise and the strength of the acting ensemble. The series was made by the production company Monumental Pictures, part of ITV Studios.^[1] It is filmed on location at West Horsley Place in Surrey.^[4] A second and third series were immediately commissioned^[5] and a Christmas episode which aired on 23 December 2020. The first episode of the third series aired on 9 August 2021, and the whole series was released on BBC iPlayer.^[6][7] In October 2021, Martha Howe-Douglas revealed that there will be a Christmas special, with Jennifer Saunders playing Lady Fanny's mother.^[8] In November 2021, a fourth series was announced, with production set to commence in January.^[9]

Premise[]

A young married couple, Alison and Mike, unexpectedly inherit the vast but crumbling Button House from a 99-year-old distant female relative of hers. The house is haunted by numerous squabbling ghosts from across the ages who died on its grounds, who are invisible and intangible to the living. Ignoring their solicitor's advice to sell the property, Alison and Mike decide to move in and renovate it, with the idea of turning the house into a luxury hotel. At first, the ghosts are not very happy with their plans and conspire to get rid of the newcomers. After various failed attempts to scare them, one of the ghosts pushes Alison from an upstairs window, resulting in Alison being clinically dead for three minutes. When she awakes two weeks later from an induced coma, she discovers her husband has arranged a huge mortgage, and that she can see the ghosts due to her moments of death.^[10]

Initially imagining the ghosts to be an after-effect of her accident, Alison eventually accepts the truth and confronts them. Because neither she (for financial reasons) nor the ghosts (who are stuck there for eternity) can leave, both sides eventually agree that they have no choice but to coexist as best they can. Meanwhile, the house requires a lot of work, and Alison and Mike devise several schemes to assist their perilous finances.^[3]

Cast[]

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• Charlotte Ritchie as Alison Cooper – A young woman who has inherited a mansion from a very distant relative. After a temporarily death-inducing experience caused by Julian pushing her out of a window, she is able to see, hear and interact with ghosts.
• Kiell Smith-Bynoe as Mike Cooper – Alison's husband, who has grand plans for the house but is not very adept at putting them into action, such as with building contracts and money managing. Although at first believing the ghosts to be Alison's hallucinations, Mike comes to accept them and often tries to communicate with them despite being unable to see them.
• Lolly Adefope as Kitty – The ghost of an overly chummy, naïve Georgian noblewoman. She wishes to be friends, even sisters, with Alison. In life, she had been mistreated by her adoptive sister Eleanor out of jealousy and rivalry over inheritance.
• Mathew Baynton as Thomas Thorne – The ghost of a failed Romantic poet who died in 1824, having been shot in a duel orchestrated by his cousin Francis Button in order to marry Isabel Higham, Thomas's love interest and the then heir to the house. He falls in love with Alison at first sight, despite them being cousins several times removed.
• Simon Farnaby as Julian Fawcett MP – The trouser-less ghost of a disgraced Tory MP who died of a heart attack in a sex scandal in 1993. His daughter Rachel Fawcett later became a Green MP. He has the ability to physically interact with the corporeal world if he concentrates hard enough albeit just enough to move small objects and press buttons. This, along with his mischievous nature, makes him the most troublesome of all the ghosts; he was also responsible for the fall that gave Alison the ability to see ghosts.
• Martha Howe-Douglas as Lady Stephanie 'Fanny' Button – The ghost of a former owner from the Edwardian era. After she discovered her husband having a threesome with the groundskeeper and the butler, he pushed her out of the window to protect his secret, an event she unwittingly re-enacts every time the clock chimes for three in the morning, the time of her death (prompting some of the other ghosts to alter the clock so that it serves as a morning alarm). She has the ability to appear as a grey lady in photographs. She is a distant relative of Alison and the great-grandmother of Button House's previous owner.
• Jim Howick as Patrick ‘Pat’ Butcher – The ghost of a friendly and polite scout leader who was accidentally shot through the neck with an arrow on the Button House grounds in 1984 by one of his scouts (who later returned as a wedding guest and paid his respects). Pat's wife Carol had an affair with his best friend Morris (whom she married after Pat's death). Pat's family visit Button House every year on the anniversary of Pat's death to pay their respects.
• Laurence Rickard as Robin – The ghost of a caveman who lived on the land Button House now occupies (and as such, is the oldest of the ghosts). He has the ability to make the lights in the house flicker, and is very good at chess and crossword puzzles despite his 'physical' limitations. He is also among the wisest of the ghosts, as he willingly counsels others when they are distressed, offering them words of advice and encouragement when needed.
  • Rickard also appears as the head of Sir Humphrey Bone – The ghost of a Tudor nobleman who was accidentally decapitated while escaping the army because they mistook him as the mastermind behind an assassination plot against Elizabeth I; whilst historians believe that he was executed on the spot for masterminding the 'Bone Plot', Bone told the ghosts that he took the blame for his wife (the true mastermind), taking a last stand to give her opportunity to escape. He struggles to have his body (played by Yani Xander) pick up his head after it has dropped him.
• Ben Willbond as the Captain – The ghost of a stern Second World War army officer and closeted gay man, who is still obsessed with his time in the war and his rank as an officer.
• Katy Wix as Mary – The ghost of a Stuart era witch trial victim burned at the stake, and constantly smouldering as a result. She has the ability (by walking through them) to make people smell burning. Her husband died three years after they married, which she attributes to their not following tradition.

In addition to playing the ghosts who comprise most of the main characters, Howe-Douglas, Baynton, Farnaby, Adefope, Rickard, Willbond, Wix and Howick also play the ghosts of medieval plague victims whose bodies were buried in a plague pit beneath the house. While they have the ability to go upstairs if they wish, they choose to spend all of their time in the basement, and are thus experts on the house's heating system. Another rarely seen resident of the house is Jemima (Anya McKenna-Bruce), a terrifying child plague victim who sings nursery rhymes that scare Button House's living and deceased residents (being the only ghost who can be heard by the living). The ghosts get her to talk to the police after calling 999 when Button House was being burgled.

Alison is also able to see ghosts outside of Button House. They include a doctor who diagnoses Alison's ability to see ghosts, a black-clad woman pushing a pram next to a busy London road, a recently murdered hitchhiker, two Second World War Luftwaffe pilots who had died in mid-air, an architect who died in the 1960s, and an English Civil War soldier who was killed with a pike and wishes to know how the war ended. She also sees the ghost of a pigeon that lived in Button House.

There are few recurring living characters in the series.

• Geoff McGivern as Barclay Beg-Chetwynde - Alison and Mike's neighbour with whom they were in a land dispute over Button House's access road. He incorrectly believes himself to be an expert on Button House and its history, ironically being undermined in his belief that the house is haunted, most notably when he invited himself to appear in the Bone Plot documentary as a talking head. Having known Barclay through the Conservative Party, Julian's knowledge of his Fijian off-shore account allowed Alison to blackmail him into resolving the land dispute in her favour. A member of the Neighbourhood Watch, Barclay apprehends a pair of thieves who had burgled Button House.
• Jessica Knappett as Lucy - She introduces herself to Alison as her paternal half-sister. Potentially complicating Alison's inheritance of Button House, she is affronted when Alison requests a confirmatory DNA test. However, after Lucy returns claiming that her start-up business was defrauded by an investor, the ghosts deduce that Lucy is a confidence trickster, having learnt about Alison and her inheritance from the Bone Plot documentary, warning the Coopers before Lucy could defraud them.

Production[]

West Horsley Place in Surrey, which appears as Button House in the series.

According to Mathew Baynton, the idea of a haunted house was one of the first ideas the writers developed after the end of Horrible Histories. However, they were initially uncertain because there was "no jeopardy that we could write into it" and they created the sitcom Yonderland for Sky One instead. However, after the ending of that series, they "realised the boredom of eternity and the existential aspects of the ghosts idea was unique...We realised it was a house-share sitcom – and as soon as you stop thinking about those kind of major drama stakes, you unlock a story that is really domestic and petty."^[11] Mike and Alison, the two living characters, were introduced as a foil to the ghosts, as well as to introduce "the stakes, the worries about money, life and everything you need for a story".^[11]

Writing in Broadcast, Jim Howick notes that the 2016 episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, in which EastEnders actor Danny Dyer discovered he was related to Edward III of England, formed the basis of the idea of Alison: "We loved the idea of Danny Dyer's royal lineage...We've mirrored this with our character Alison, who discovers her aristocratic roots, which she embraces immediately and takes on with relish".^[12]

Baynton recalled that BBC head of comedy commissioning Shane Allen was looking for a pre-watershed primetime sitcom for BBC One. During the writing process, the intention was to make an adult show, but one that would appeal to older children, along the lines of Blackadder: "We wanted to do something that has a properly creaky atmosphere. I love the idea that some kids might stay up for it. It's great as a kid when you think something isn't quite for you and it's a bit cheekier."^[12] In the event, the programme was scheduled at 9.30 on Monday evenings after the sitcom Not Going Out. Baynton noted in the i newspaper that as the original audience of Horrible Histories would now be grown up, "hopefully we're making something so they can continue to watch us!"^[13]

Baynton said the Tim Burton film Beetlejuice provided the writers a "useful tonal reference" as did The Rocky Horror Show. Jim Howick, addressing its similarity to the 1970s series Rentaghost noted most of the writers were either slightly too young or too old to have watched it, but the series did make knowing use of many of the clichés of horror programmes, such as headless Tudor noblemen.^[12]

The programme is filmed at West Horsley Place in Surrey, England, a large country house unexpectedly inherited by the writer and former University Challenge presenter Bamber Gascoigne in 2014 from his great aunt, the Duchess of Roxburghe, under circumstances not dissimilar to those depicted in the series.^[14][15] Some scenes were also filmed on London Road and Clandon Road in nearby Guildford^[16] with outside images of the famous Bettys Tea Rooms in Harrogate, West Riding of Yorkshire rebranded as "Sandrine's" in the penultimate scene of the final episode of season three.

Filming of the second series started on 13 January 2020. On 12 September 2020 Baynton tweeted that the second series would begin airing on 21 September 2020 on BBC One.^[17] The series was moved to a pre-watershed slot of 8.30pm.^[18]

Production on the third series began in early 2021^[19] and finished on 7 April 2021.^[20] It premiered on 9 August 2021.^[21]

Episodes[]

Series 1 (2019)[]

Series 2 (2020)[]

Series 3 (2021)[]

Reception[]

Critical reception to the series has been positive. Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian wrote that "In making us giggle at the supernatural, Ghosts is very British – a mash-up of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), not to mention the manifold sillinesses of Hammer [film] horrors. But it is American in the sense of having a gag-to-airtime ratio much higher than British sitcoms normally manage these days."^[10] Michael Hogan in The Daily Telegraph was similarly positive, comparing it to the 1970s children's sitcom Rentaghost but noting that "This deliriously daft supernatural romp, however, was none the worse for that."^[4]

Susannah Butter in the Evening Standard said the first episode reminded her of a property show, watching the couple view a terrible flat, before making their escape to the country. She was critical of the post-watershed scheduling of 9.30pm, saying "it feels like a show that children would enjoy" and noting "This is a gentle ensemble comedy. Alison and Mike are wide-eyed, charming and likeable. I would gladly have them as friends, even though they can't sing...Nothing about this show is scary."^[3] Carol Midgley in The Times was also confused by the scheduling, noting that "Ghosts is smut[-] and swearword-free" and calling it "a curiously life-affirming comedy about death".^[2]

Contrasting it with the bleak "sadcoms" such as Fleabag and After Life, Pat Stacey in the Irish Independent noted "It's joyously, infectiously silly, yet at the same time whip-smart. It's just the ticket to scare those sadcom blues away."^[25]

A second series was announced a week after the transmission of episode 6.^[26] The BBC Press Office announcement noted it received a consolidated average of 3.7 million viewers across the series, highlighting its popularity with 16–34 year-old viewers.^[26] On 8 October 2019, Rickard confirmed that a third series had also been commissioned.^[27][5]

In April 2021, the sitcom was nominated for the Scripted Comedy BAFTA Award and the Comedy Writer BAFTA Craft Award.^[28]

Adaptation[]

An American adaptation of the series was announced on 29 November 2019 by CBS.^[29] On 4 February 2020, it was announced that a pilot had been ordered to be produced by BBC Studios, Lionsgate Television and CBS Studios.^[30] On 4 March 2020, Rose McIver was cast in the pilot.^[31] On 1 July 2020, Utkarsh Ambudkar was also cast.^[32] On 9 December 2020, additional casting of Brandon Scott Jones, Richie Moriarty, Asher Grodman, Rebecca Wisocky, Sheila Carrasco, Danielle Pinnock and Roman Zaragoza was announced.^[33] On 31 March 2021, it was announced that a full series had been ordered.^[34] The series premiered on 7 October 2021.^[35]

References[]