According to an insider, a movie adaptation of hit BBC sitcom Ghosts could be going before the cameras this year.
One of the BBC’s most successful children’s shows of recent years is Horrible Histories, which presented sketches about historical events in a superbly silly fashion. The writers and performers soon took the show to the big screen in the wonderful Bill, which tells the fictionalised story of Shakespeare – it’s one of the most delightful family films of the last decade and a bit, and is available to watch via Amazon Prime.
The crew then went on to create Yonderland, a surreal sitcom about a magical kingdom hidden in a woman’s kitchen cupboard.
However, Ghosts is the show that has arguably made the most impact. Starring Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe as a couple who inherit a huge mansion, Ritchie soon discovers that she, and only she, can see the collection of ghosts who haunt it. They include Simon Farnaby as a trouserless disgraced MP, Matthew Baynton as a Regency Romantic poet, Lolly Adefope as an overexcitable Georgian noblewoman, Ben Willbond as the pompous Captain, Laurence Rickard as the monosyllabic caveman, Martha Howe-Douglas as an overbearing Edwardian lady and Katy Wix as a witch trial victim.
The show steadily built up a dedicated fanbase after it premiered in 2019, and it wasn’t long before it was adapted in America. The USseries is currently in its fourth season.
The British version of Ghosts came to an end with a Christmas special in 2023.
According to Chortle, if it isn’t an oxymoron to say it, there may be life in Ghosts yet, as a feature film has apparently been written and will go in front of the cameras “within months”.
It should be said that this information comes from an unnamed insider speaking to The Daily Star, so take it with a huge pinch of salt. Many of the cast, who also write the show, are currently busy on other things. Farnaby, ever since co-writing Paddington 2 with Paul King – one of the best films ever made – is writing an adaptation of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, and will soon reunite with King to co-write Prince Charming for Disney.
You can watch all series of Ghosts and Ghosts US on BBC iPlayer. More on a potential Ghosts movie as we get it.
