Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Martha Howe-Douglas, Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Lolly Adefope, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond, Katy Wix, Yani Xander, Jim Howick, Richard Durden, Ed Kear, Ania Marson, Anya McKenna-Bruce, Steve Oram, Tom Mackley, Paul Cawley, Peter Coe, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Caroline Guthrie, Geoffrey McGivern, Tim Plester, Sophie Thompson, Richard Thomson, Angela Yeoh, Simon Bubb, Rosie Cavaliero, Florian Schwienbacher, Simon Stache.
A house has history, we forget that when we walk from room to room and take pride in our efforts to have updated the interior, the furnishings, the extensions built, we forget that unless we have bought a new build that there were people who called our home, their home, that they lived and played, argued and loved, cheated and had moments of clarity and serenity, and for whom possibly died in a room that seek our own solace in, the ghosts we never see, the ghosts we have watching over us when we are alone.
Ghosts though should probably not be thought of as spectres, as a threat conjured up as an explanation to the noises that creak and make you stir uncomfortably in your sleep, instead they are the memories caught in a cycle of permanent play, a recording caught on a loop and looking to us for validation, and it is in that the team behind the sensational Horrible Histories have brought to life a comedy which works well with the large ensemble and one that breaks the conventions of the situation comedy which in many cases has become stale and looks bland in the face of its American counterpart.
The first series of Ghosts sets up the relationship between Alison and Mike, a husband and wife team who have inherited a mansion and all that lays within. The realisation that the payoff is derived very much from its setting is perhaps the key component in making sure that the comedy works, it gives credence to the cast of characters whose stories interweave between the living and the dead sharing the same space and time, and Alison, played with charm by Charlotte Ritchie, who thanks to a near death experience is able to interact with those who have passed from sight.
On the face of it, the series owes thanks to the long running classic children’s television serial Rentaghost, its timing, the way it hones in on the idea of time as moving entity in which our character at death is able to continue evolving whilst never betraying the fundamental point of what made us an individual in the first place.
Whilst the series is very much an ensemble piece, the moulding of certain characters is to be praised, especially Martha Howe-Douglas’ Lady Fanny Button, an uptight Edwardian whose husband killed her after she discovered him having a threesome with his gardener and butler, Simon Farnaby’s tarnished M.P. who is condemned to spend eternity trouser less after dying in a sex scandal and Katy Wix as Mary who literally smoulders as Mary, a housemaid killed during the time of the witch trials.
Ghosts is a delightful series in which the eccentricities of the British condition are explored and expanded upon in detail in the afterlife, a reminder that British comedy is not dead, that with thought it can be more than just cheap laughs and stroking the ego of a central personality, enjoyable and entertaining.
Ian D. Hall