Haunted By You:Ghosts S2.

"Why is no-one ever alive when you need them" - The Captain

Series two of Ghosts (BBC1/iPlayer, originally screened throughout September and October of 2020 with a Xmas special in - you guessed it - December, and directed by Tom Kingsley) didn't hugely deviate from the format of the first series. In fact, it didn't deviate at all. It was more or less a continuation of that first series.

Nothing wrong with that. Again, while it was rarely laugh out loud funny it was well written, wryly humorous, and, perhaps more than anything, a gentle and sweet piece of television. Which you can't say for that many things in recent years.

The whole gang were back. Button House owners Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) are still struggling to make ends meet and to get the house done up and the ghosts are still helping them and hindering them in equal measures.

The Captain (Ben Willbond), Kitty (Lolly Adefope), Julian Fawcett MP (Simon Farnaby), Thomas Thorne (Mathew Baynton), Robin (Laurence Rickard), Mary (Katy Wix), Pat (Jim Howick), and Fanny (Martha Howe-Douglas) haven't changed their essential character, or their clothes, at all. That's the thing with being dead. You don't change much.

Even the plague pit ghosts and Sir Humphrey Bone's head (Rickard again) are still around. They've been there, in some case, thousands of years so why would they not be? This series sees Alison and Mike advertising Button House as a wedding venue (even though work clearly needs to be done before it is ready), groups of ghost hunters attracted to the house after a 'photo' of Fanny at the window goes viral, burglars (including a cameo from Ladhood's Aqib Khan) trying to rob the house, and a wild party which results in both Alison and Mike waking up the next day with stinking hangovers.

All of these events are, of course, simply excuses to get the ghosts, and everyone else around, to be weird and silly. Witness romantic poet Thomas Thorne dancing to The Cure, a sledging vicar (not a euphemism), wine quite literally coming out of the ears of dandies, and the ghosts regularly meeting up to watch YouTube. Robin somehow manages to get suckered into conspiracy theories about Elvis's death and 'faked' moon landings and, at one point, the ghosts, start to have physical and romantic feelings. About each other and about the living.

Though Thomas's ardour for Alison remains undimmed throughout. Although they overdo the fanny jokes a bit ("a glimpse of Fanny", "Fanny pictures", and "Fanny's exposed" to name just three) it's never intolerably forced and there are plenty of other funny lines and scenarios. "What sort of moron believes in ghosts?" asks Julian, a ghost, at one point, the plague pit ghosts get into amusing squabbles, and Mary doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the term "sucked off".

I also liked some of the Captain's antiquated turns of phrase, "steady the bus" and "bally Hell", as well as his demand that the others put a stop to their "horseplay". We even get The Captain's, and Thomas Thorne's, back story and find out how they ended up dying in and around Button House. Revelations about Julian paint him in various shades (some better than others) and even Kitty is learning. By reading Lady Chatterley's Lover.

The reliably excellent Geoffrey McGivern is back, slightly underused, as Barclay Beg-Chetwynde, and the whole thing whizzes along breezily. With a few genuinely emotional moments like the time Mike overhears Alison talking about their wedding day and how she felt. Or, during the Xmas episode, Julian's speech about how Christmas with the family isn't supposed to be easy. That's what makes it special. I'd have enjoyed watching that over the festive period - and related to it as well. When that show ended with Alison playing piano and singing In The Bleak Midwinter, joined by a chorus of ghosts - ghosts we've all come to know and love, I welled up a bit. Nice is a word people say you shouldn't use much but Ghosts, more than anything else, is a nice television programme.