"Haunting's hard innit?" - Pat Butcher
When series one of Ghosts first aired, on BBC1 back in April and May of 2019, it pretty much passed me by. But as the years have gone by, I've seen more and more people posting on social media about how much they I enjoy it so when I saw all four series were available on iPlayer I thought I'd delve in.
I'm glad I did. I enjoyed it. There's not that many laugh out loud moments but it's quietly, and gently, funny with some great lines and it's even rather sweet in places. The story begins with Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike Cooper (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) who have been struggling to find a suitable home on a limited budget when, out of the blue, they inherit a country mansion, Button House, from a distant relative.
Their plans to turn it into a hotel, however, are severely hampered and not just because it's in a severe state of disrepair. But also because it's home to an alarmingly large number of ghosts. There are a group of helpful and friendly ghosts who live in a former plague pit in the basement and there is even a ghost pigeon but the main group of ghosts consist of a motley assortment of well meaning buffoons who had the misfortune to die either in Button House or its grounds and are compelled to spend all eternity there.
There's the Captain (Ben Willbond), a stuffy World War II officer who believes himself to be the leader of the ghosts and arranges everything as if a military operation. There's Julian Fawcett MP (Simon Farnaby), a disgraced Tory MP who died in a sex scandal in 1993 and is doomed to spend his death trouserless. He does however, unlike the other ghosts, have the power, to enter the corporeal world. But only to the extent of pushing a cup off a table or pressing a button on a keyboard down.
All of the ghosts experience pain should a human pass through them. Including Lady Stephanie 'Fanny' Button (Martha Howe-Douglas), an overbearing Edwardian 'lady' who was pushed out of the window of Button House by her adulterous husband and re-enacts that event each night. She's also very critical of the way Alison dresses and deports herself.
Thomas Thorne (Mathew Baynton) is an overdramatic Romantic poet who was shot dead in a duel. He's prone to falling in love easily so, of course, he falls for Alison which results in one of the series' best lines:- "you're married, I'm dead. It could never work". Kitty (Lolly Adefope) also courts Alison's attention but only in the form of friendship. She's an excitable Georgian woman of the nobility who is so innocent as to believe babies are made when people touch ears.
Patrick 'Pat' Butcher (Jim Howick) is some kind of scout group leader who was shot in the neck during an archery session and so is always dressed in a scout-ish uniform with an arrow still through his neck. Katy Wix plays Mary, a witch trial victim who was burned at the stake, and Laurence Rickard is Robin, the oldest of all the ghosts. A caveman who's obsessed with bears and whose very funny impersonation of one reminded me of Sir Rowley Birkin QC from The Fast Show.
Rickard also plays a more occasional ghost. Sir Humphrey Bone is a high society Tudor who was decapitated. Rather amusingly, his head and body don't work well together and sometimes don't even get on. As an aside Rickard was, along with - take a deep breath - Farnaby, Baynton, Howe-Douglas, Willbond, and Howick, created the concept behind the show with Tom Kingsley on directing duties for this first series.
When Alison and Mike first arrive in Button House, the ghosts don't want them there but Alison and Mike can't see or hear the ghosts until Julian somehow manages to push Alison out of a window. After she recovers from her coma she realises she can now both see and hear the ghosts as well as they can all living people but it's quite a job to convince Mike of this.
He eventually comes round but the ghosts still want rid of what they see as intruders. But how to get rid of them? They came up with a very unusual plan. To haunt the place. The living and dead enter a war of attrition which gets nobody anywhere so eventually they decide to live side by side but that, of course, is not the end of their silly adventures.
Money for restoration work becomes extremely tight so Alison and Mike allow a film crew to film a Regency Drama, Life of Byron, to be shot at Button House. Much to the annoyance of Thomas Thorne who considered Byron his mortal foe.
Elsewhere the ghosts are introduced to Friends (which they all enjoy while not quite understanding it), Alison and Mike narrowly avoid being swindled by hotel developer Fiona (Rosie Cavaliero), and have a run in with their neighbours, Barclay (Geoffrey McGivern, it's always a good sign when he makes a cameo) and Bunny Beg-Chetwynde (Sophie Thompson), and struggle to enjoy even time in bed together because Kitty keeps jumping in with them.
Not everything works. There's a weak joke when Mike mistakes pot-pourri for food and tries to eat it and there's a couple of other slapstick moments that would probably work better in the Horrible Histories that this team previously made.
But, mostly, it's a small joy. There's a "who you gonna call?" joke, Thomas reciting I Should Be So Lucky as if it's a romantic poem, and when Alison visits a doctor and he reveals himself to already be dead it's played out brilliantly. I particularly enjoyed Julian Fawcett MP describing sexual practices with names like 'Norwegian campsite' and 'Himalayan picnic'. Most of all I just liked the sweet and silly nature of Ghosts. I'll watch series two soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment