Ghosts review — it’s silly family fun . . . and boy, do we need it (original) (raw)

Ghosts
BBC One
★★★☆☆

Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story
ITV
★★☆☆☆

Ghosts returned for a second series in the saner pre-watershed slot of 8.30pm. I don’t know what BBC One was thinking last time scheduling it at 9.30pm: it’s hardly Fleabag. Plus if anyone can be trusted to do a decent double entendre that adults will get but kids probably won’t, it is this fine and much-loved former Horrible Histories team.

As evidenced when Jim Howick’s character, Pat, a dead scout leader with an arrow through his neck, bellowed: “Oh no! Fanny’s exposed.” Fanny being the name of the ghost of a posh old lady (Martha Howe-Douglas). See? No smelling salts required here. Ditto when the ghost hunters wanted “a few Fanny pictures” and “came here for a glimpse of Fanny”. I think we can all see that Fanny is the writer’s gift that keeps on giving.

Martha Howe-Douglas as Lady Fanny Button in the sitcom Ghosts

Martha Howe-Douglas as Lady Fanny Button in the sitcom Ghosts

BBC

Anyway, it’s good to have something you can call proper family entertainment back. We need more silly, quick-fire gag, comfort-blanket TV right now, and this life-affirming cheer-you-up tale about a nice young couple inheriting a decrepit mansion house full of ghosts spanning various centuries, including a caveman and plague victims, is just the ticket. Even though it is, unavoidably, all about death.

In lesser hands many of these gags could fall flat, but this show is all about the performances. The cast are comedy veterans with great timing and they can make a dead Tory MP wearing no trousers (Simon Farnaby,) who wants a smartphone to play online golf, or a burning woman funny. I think, for now though, they might have exhausted the vagina-based gags.

ITV has been on a roll lately, true-crime-wise (Des, White House Farm) so I suppose it had to end sooner or later. Rose West and Myra Hindley: Their Untold Story was a gossipy documentary that had very little substance. Don’t get me wrong: I was interested in a fishwife-ish way to hear whether Myra Hindley and Rose West had been lovers at HMP Durham (scant evidence), but there was hardly anything here that I hadn’t read in the papers so there wasn’t much “untold” about it.

Did anyone need to know that West likes having baths, not showers, or that she voted for Kelvin Fletcher to win Strictly Come Dancing last year? (She gets a prison visitor she calls “Mum” to cast her vote for her.) It felt tawdry and unnecessary to rehash the devastating, haunting words of poor Lesley Ann Downey again.

Trevor McDonald spoke to two former inmates, one of whom did 18 years for murder. These women were remarkable only for living so closely with Hindley and West yet having little interesting to say about it. One said West once looked her up and down in the shower. Hardly headline stuff.

Both West and Hindley had violent tempers (no kidding). One claim I had not heard before was that Hindley had ended her alleged fling with West because “she killed her own children”. When the inmate pointed out that she too had murdered children Hindley is said to have replied: “Yes, but they weren’t mine, they were other people’s.” Ye gods. I think I would be content never to hear a word about these two again.