Ghosts: BBC comedy that is a salve for the soul in troubled times

It’s a daft but wonderful premise: eight people who died at different points from the Stone Age to the 1990s are destined to go through death together as ghosts in a sprawling country house. We first meet these eclectic housemates when the tedium of their ever-after is interrupted by a penniless young couple inheriting the mansion.

One half of the couple, Alison, suffers a head injury and wakens from a coma to find she can see and hear her spectral companions. The ghosts and Alison are mutually repelled at first, but relationships form and… well, you’ll just have to watch it.

No one just likes Ghosts, people love it. When a new series is announced, WhatsApp lights up. The interaction of living humans and busybody phantoms provides endless comedy, like when Alison is handed a bottle of frighteningly expensive wine by her posh neighbour Barclay Beg-Chetwynde and without thinking hands it to ghost Kitty (noooooooo!!!).

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The ghosts are affronted in series two when burglars get into the house. This invasion infuriates uptight Edwardian Fanny Button, who was once lady of the manor. But ever the guardian of standards, she’s even more disgusted by the burglars’ lack of expertise in antiques.

Unseen by them she berates them for filling the last space in their van with tankards. “No, no, no, those are only pewter!” she bellows.

“Save that space and go back for the champagne!” Martha Howe-Douglas’s goggling sneer alone is deserving of a Bafta.

If you watch Ghosts you will have your favourite character, but mine is Robin, the philosopher caveman (played with a huge heart by Laurence Rickard). His hairy noggin, animal skins and habit of moon worshipping hide a mean chess brain and melancholic wisdom born of spending thousands of years alone, left behind again and again while others are “sucked off” (steady now, it means taken with a whoosh into the great beyond, though where that is even the ghosts don’t know).

But all the characters are gems. Jolly Pat (Jim Howick), destined to spend eternity with an arrow in his neck after a tragic archery incident; Julian the trouserless Tory MP (Simon Farnaby) who expired during an extra marital incident at Button House; witch craze victim Mary (Katy Wix) who leaves a burning smell wherever she goes; the Captain, a repressed gay man and World War One army officer (Ben Willbond); Georgian ingenue Kitty (Lolly Adefope); headless Tudor Sir Humphrey (Rickard again); practical Alison (Charlotte Ritchie); hapless husband Mike (Kiell Bynoe-Smith); and preening Thomas (Mathew Baynton), the Romantic poet shot during a duel who fancies poor Alison rotten.

Detectorists (Image: free)

There are theories about why this turned into the BBC’s sleeper hit of the pandemic – that it offered light relief at a time of anxiety, that a comedy drama featuring an ensemble cast cooped up in a house with nothing to do reflected our Covid experience back at us – but it proved to be much more than a balm for lockdown jitters.

The news hasn’t cheered up any since 2020 and at a time of war, hunger, climate change and far right rhetoric, Ghosts has provided a psychological haven for its stressed and weary viewers for five series.

The comedian Lee Mack, speaking on the radio last week, noted that audiences are moving away from aggressive humour and prefer “friendlier” comedy. No wonder.

Serious TV drama isn’t much of an escape: it’s awash with global conspiracies and antiheroes. Ghosts, which is suitable for older kids as well as adults (perhaps reflecting the troupe’s background in kids’ TV with Horrible Histories), spotlights the essential goodness of human nature. It’s kind without being sentimental.

Take one episode before bedtime, is my advice: it helps to restore perspective.

There is an American remake, and some fans like it, but I gave up after a couple of episodes. I found it angular and too zany, lacking the charm of the original. If you grew up steeped in British comedy, you’ll find nods here to Blackadder and Mackenzie Crook’s sublime Detectorists.

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Ghosts is written collectively by the cast members and as with all great comedy writing, we can see ourselves in the flawed souls we’re watching. It has a redemptive quality, with the characters given the chance to re-evaluate their earthly behaviour and choices in the light of more tolerant modern attitudes.

There’s a touching scene at the end of series three. The ghosts have just averted a disaster, and join Alison and Mike in the kitchen. This time the couple set the table for 10. Everyone mmmns when the lid is lifted off the pot but of course the ghosts can’t eat.

The divide between the living and dead occupants of Button House suddenly widens to a gulf, but Mary starts pretending to share in the meal and the others follow suit.

Pat asks Robin what he’s having for dessert. “Yes, berries, yes, cream,” says Robin gruffly. “Creamy berries,” repeats Pat, beaming round at everyone. “Lovely.”

It’s a moment of coming together and shared affection across the great divide.

And perhaps it’s this that explains why Ghosts is so beloved of its many fans. We inhabitants of these rainy little islands tend to be uncomfortable with death; we don’t discuss it much or memorialise the dead in vibrant ways as some other cultures do.

We are a secular and religiously confused society where wonderings about the meaning of life and nature of death tend to take place in the privacy of our own heads. But we can deal with it if it’s funny; gags help.

There are jokes aplenty in Ghosts, if that’s all you want from it. But there is also longing and poignancy, joy and hope.

By ‘eck, Ghosts will be much missed.

You can catch up with Ghosts on BBC iPlayer