Ghosts: Being Dead was Never so Fun!

I haven’t really been able to watch many sitcoms lately, due to my schedule and commitments I have to be picky about what I am watching, but there is one sitcom that has really captured my attention and when I have a moment, I tune in to it.  That sitcom is Ghosts, now a few episodes into it’s second season.  Based on a BBC comedy of the same name, the plot revolves around an old house that a young couple, Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), inherits and become determined to renovate into a bed and breakfast inn.  The only problem is, due to an accident, Sam is now able to see ghosts, and there is a plethora of them at the inn. Each died in the house or on its property and are all from a different time period. The crew of ghosts include a Viking who died 1000 years ago, a closeted gay American Revolution officer, a Lenape Native American, an uptight “lady of the manor” who died in the 1800s, a prohibition jazz singer from the 1920s, a hippie girl from the 1960s, a scout leader from the 1980s, a hard partying wall street tycoon who died in 2000.  Plus a few others scattered around the property.  Sam tries to help the ghosts and in return is assisted by them.

The plot for each episode is pretty formulaic; either the couple has an issue that the ghosts try to fix or a ghost has an issue that the couple try to fix, and in each case the end result includes a “Life / Death” lesson and heartwarming hilarity.  The first episode of season two, sees the couple welcoming their first guests to the B&B, but it turns out the couple is very picky, and Sam has the ghosts spy on the couple to try to learn their grievances and overcompensate to get a good yelp review. The second episode, after listening to a murder mystery pod cast, the cast get the idea to do one based on Alberta’s (Danielle Pinnock) murder, but a secret diary exposes more about the 1920s jazz singers past than she wanted people to know, but by the end, the team has their first suspect in solving Alberta’s untimely demise.

The writing on the show is witty and all the actors do a fantastic job.  This is one of the few shows translated from the British to American television that I prefer the American version to.  The characters are all likeable and quirky in their own ways and easy to connect with, and you care about them.  I feel this is the secret to good storytelling and so often this is lost.  Even the “annoying” characters, need to be likeable in a quirky way.  The production value is what you would expect from a network sitcom.  The other nice thing about a sitcom, is that for the most part, the episodes are self-contained, although each episode does follow a timeline and a loose central plot, you really don’t need to watch them in order.  I have not seen every episode of season one but did not feel lost at all when watching the first two episodes of season two.