Ghosts, BBC One, review: goodbye to a sitcom that has bowed out with its heart intact
So-called “Christmas specials” stop being special when they feel as if they’ve been happening every year since records began. Call the Midwife, Strictly Come Dancing, Mrs Brown’s Boys – it would be a special Christmas Day if they didn’t appear in the line-up. Wouldn’t it be great to watch something genuinely new?
Well, technically that something isn’t Ghosts (BBC One), which has been doing festive episodes for four years. But this one does feel different – partly because the show is still fresh and partly because it’s the last episode, so this is a farewell to its characters. And it’s a great send-off. Ghosts is that rare thing: a good BBC comedy.
The premise is simple. A young couple moves into a haunted house filled with a motley bunch of spirits. Alison (Charlotte Ritchie), following a bump to the head, can see them; Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) can’t but accepts that they’re there. The ghosts are annoying, from a bumptious politician caught with his trousers down to a lovelorn Keatsian poet, and a Scout leader with an arrow still embedded in his neck after an unfortunate camping accident.
In this finale, Alison and Mike have a new baby. They also have Mike’s mother outstaying her welcome and making “helpful” suggestions. This may be a comedy, but Ritchie gives a strikingly accurate depiction of new motherhood: washed out, bone tired.
There are laughs when mother-in-law Betty (Sutara Gayle) calls in a priest to conduct an exorcism after spotting some ghostly goings-in, and when Regency ghost Thomas (Mathew Baynton) announces that he no longer loves Alison and has transferred his affections to Jennifer Aniston. But the real beauty of Ghosts has always been its warmth as well as silly jokes. Families aren’t always blood relations, but can be people you’ve chosen – isn’t that the essence of so many good sitcoms, from Friends to Sex and the City?
When the ghosts tell Alison and Mike that they should go their own way, it’s really quite moving. And a postscript supplies a Christmassy, feelgood ending. Goodbye to a show that has bowed out without the quality ever dipping.
