Spirits In The Material World:Ghosts S3.

The Ghosts are back. Or at least they were, on BBC1, during August and September of 2021 (with a Xmas special in, you guessed it, December of that year). I caught up with the third of, so far, four series on the iPlayer over the last few days. It was, as with series one and two, a delight.

If anything this was the funniest series so far. Not much has changed. Nick Collett has replaced Tom Kingsley in the director's chair but, on screen, it's pretty much business as normal with Button House's owners Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) being helped, harassed, and hoaxed by the motley crew of spooks and ghouls they share their home with.

Robin (Laurence Rickard) has developed a knowledge of Loose Women that rivals his knowledge of chess, Kitty (Lolly Adefope) gets excited about watching Grease but ends up getting it mixed up with Nightmare On Elm Street and watching that instead, Fanny (Martha Howe-Douglas) briefly falls in love with a most unlikely suitor, and even Sir Humphrey-Bone (Rickard again) gets to share his back story. 

Not that the other ghosts are the most appreciative audience. I suppose they're in no rush. They've got nothing but time. Time that Thomas Thorne (Mathew Baynton) spends mooning after Alison, time that the Captain (Ben Willbond) likes to organise efficiently, time that Pat (Jim Howick) wants to devote to doing a seemingly never ending quiz, and time that Julian Fawcett MP (Simon Farnaby) would rather spend watching pornography and reminiscing about the good old days of sexual harassing female colleagues.

He is, after all, a former Tory. Mary (Katy Wix) is put to better use in this series and, for some reason, her constant obsession with fennel became very amusing. As did the Captain's mistaken belief that pillow talk means talking to one's pillow, the scene where the ghosts gather round a campfire to tell ghost stories (!), and, not sure why but it cracked me up, Robin's memory of a hunt:- "first time hunt mammoth, me be bricking it".

There was a bit too much Whigfield for my liking and Thomas doing keepy-uppies with Humphrey's head wasn't as funny as the makers seemed to think but they were minor gripes. I smiled, rather than laughed, at the more puerile jokes such as mixing up "aural" with "oral", a Button House onesie that from a certain angle appears to read Butt Ho, and a lord whose "balls are the most magnificent in the country".

Of course, there's the usual Fanny jokes. The gift that keeps giving. The best of them, this time, being the line "lucky Fanny, to be touched up by such a hand". In relation to some restorative work on her portrait, of course. The part that made me laugh the most though was when Julian decided to interfere with Mike's work e-mail correspondence by adding an unwanted x to it. Leading to a lengthy debate about the appropriateness of adding kisses to work emails.

Elsewhere, it's all go at Button House. A documentary team descend on the property to make a film about an anti-Elizabethan coup, the house is treated for woodworm - which means everyone has to camp in the grounds, and it even becomes a location for AA meetings. There's even a fear that irritating neighbour Barclay Beg-Chetwynde (Geoffrey McGivern) may die in the house and be stuck there forever.

That's something nobody wants. The story that runs through the whole series is the arrival of Alison's long lost sister Lucy (Jessica Knappett). Kitty becomes very jealous of Alison's burgeoning friendship with Lucy but that may soon prove to be the least of either of their problems.

While Ghosts doesn't always grip me completely (I look at my phone, or my "field phone" as the Captain would call it, far too often) it always feels warm and comfortable. From Julian doing, and saying, a "chinny reckon" to the strangely familiar guest star Richard Durden and on to the scenes where the ghosts gather round the telly to watch football (though Fanny would prefer to watch Murder She Wrote) you always feel engaged in the presence of these characters.

Almost like a family. Perhaps that's why it feels okay to do other things when spending time with them. Obviously, as with many families, the Christmas edition has its heartwarming moments and there are a couple of genuinely moving moments. It's sad when Alison realises that someone she thought she was close to is revealed to have dishonest intentions but it's emotional, in a very nice way, when the ghosts, who can neither eat nor drink, mime a feast and a toast. Just to feel alive again. Which is, oddly enough, one thing this show makes you feel. Alive.