Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished:Ghosts S5.

Spirit they're gone, spirit they've vanished. The ghosts are no more. They will not be seen again. Though, strictly speaking, the ghosts remain and, strictly speaking, only one person (and about four to five million television viewers) could see them anyway. But the fifth season of Ghosts (BBC1/iPlayer, directed by Simon Hynd, and shown during October and November last year - with a Christmas Day special) is the last we'll be seeing of the Ghosts and the last we'll be seeing of everyone else associated with Button House.

It was an emotional five years and though the last series was as good as any of the first four, it's probably right that they decided to bow out here. The law of diminishing returns was likely to take affect sooner rather than later and the talented cast and makers of Ghosts (mostly the same people) will no doubt be coming out with something equally great very soon, either together or separately.

Ghosts was always more about the characters than it was about the storylines and in the fifth series this is truer than ever. There's one major narrative that threads the series together (Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) are expecting a baby and, to help with money, they're thinking of selling off some of the less used land on the grounds of Button House for use as a golf course) but the bulk of the drama is made up of the ghosts line dancing, playing April Fool pranks on Alison (who takes revenge in kind with the help of Sir Humphrey Bone's head (Laurence Rickard, his body in this series is credited as being played by one Xani Yander), competing for the imagined affections of a television weather forecaster, and enjoying games of Blankety Blank, Mastermind, Family Fortunes, Bullseye, and Less Points (sic).

The ghosts, of course, have not changed one bit. They can't. Kitty (Lolly Adefope) remains forever the innocent child in a woman's body. She gets excited by balloons and cake and, after hearing Alison's pregnancy symptoms, starts to believe she, too, is pregnant - despite not knowing how babies are made. Thomas (Mathew Baynton) is still besotted with, and mooning over, Alison (though he does, at one point, express an affection for Jennifer Aniston) while, at the same time, imagining himself to be Scottish and becoming frustrated at his lack of success, and recognition, as a poet.

Julian (Simon Farnaby) remains as trouserless as he does shameless (as befits a proudly disgraced Tory MP, he almost seems a gentle anachronism compared to the monsters that inhabit that party now) and, at one point, boasts of having met Shaggy on The Big Breakfast. Fanny (Martha Howe-Douglas) continues to be aghast at the modern world and, most of all, the behaviour and dress of modern women while Pat (Jim Howick) is as tiggerish and enthusiastic as ever. Though it turns out that the proud Yorkshireman and Huddersfield FC fan used to live in Reading.

Robin (Laurence Rickard), who arrived in Britain before Britain even existed (having walked across the continent when it was all still one), proves himself to be a surprisingly erudite troglodyte. Why, he even speaks French. As for the Captain (Ben Willbond)? As ever, he gives very little away ... until ... believing that an apocryphal event is on the horizon he reveals both his back story (finally) and even his real name. Was his love of S Club 7 a clue all along?

The Captain's story is but one sweet moment in Ghosts S5 (a series in which, it has to be said, there are very few actual LOLs) as is the scene in which we find out how Kitty died (in 1780, after her first taste of pineapple, an event she considers more important than her actual death) but there are plenty of others. Even normally rapacious and untrustworthy neighbour Barclay Beg-Chetwynde (Geoffrey McGivern) shows his softer side after Mike shares a Wagon Wheel with him. Heavens, there's even an emotional line dancing scene and that's something for me to admit. Someone who considers Achy Breaky Heart one of the worst pieces of recorded music of all time.

There's some typically ribald humour (Fanny talking about 'spunk' a bit too much for the liking of Alison - who, of course, has a very different understanding of the word) but most of it is silly as fans of Ghosts will have come to expect. There's a mouse called Graeme Souness, Pat's idea of a modern man, attractive to women, is someone who "drives a Datsun" and "eats Caramac", and then there's Thomas trying to reassure Mike's friend Obi (Nathan Bryon), after he's been dumped, that "the first hundred years are the worst".

There are decent cameos from Richard Durden as solicitor Charles Worthing and Emma Sidi as Kitty's jealous sister Eleanor and the whole thing comes to a head, as it was always going to, in the Christmas special. By this time, Alison and Mike have become parents to baby Mia (Neriah and Neveah Johnson, parents of twins - you're quids in if you get your kids into acting) and Mike's mum, Betty (Sutara Gayle) comes to stay at Button House to 'help out'.

After witnessing some spectral goings on over the baby monitor, Betty becomes convinced that Button House is haunted (!) and calls in a reverend (Neil Edmond) to perform an exorcism. Much to Alison, Mike, and the ghost's dismay. In the end they come up with an ingenious, and suitably daft, plan to foil Betty so that life can continue as normal for everyone concerned. Those that are ageing - and those that never will age again.

Of course, the Christmas episode - the final ever episode of Ghosts, is the best and it ends on a very heartwarming moment. We'll miss these ghosts, we'll never meet ghosts quite like them again, Spirit they're gone, spirit they've vanished.