“I see dead people.” That’s the famous phrase uttered by Haley Joel Osment to Bruce Willis in the movie The Sixth Sense. He wasn’t being very precise, which allows for the plot twist at the end of the movie. But what does it mean when you see dead people? Do you see them alive? Do you see all dead people? Or only certain ones? Does it depend on your location? Does it depend on when they died? Is it only the ones who have ‘unfinished business’ that haunt around?
I’ve just finished watching the first two seasons of BBC’s Ghosts. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve watched this year, with a superb cast from the folks that brought us Horrible Histories. The ghosts in question haunt the grounds of a stately old mansion. They can’t leave the area. If they try, they just walk back into the same zone. All of them died in that area – the ghosts are localized. But the interesting part is that they lived and died in different eras. Some have been haunting for hundreds of years, some for thousands, and some just died in the last decade or two. They try to get along because they have no choice – they’re all stuck there together. They have to come up with fun activities to stave away boredom from story-telling to charades.
One day the main living protagonists showed up – a young couple who have just inherited the mansion. Since they’re trying to make ends meet, they want to turn it into a hotel to the horror of the resident ghosts. In a twist of fate, the woman has a near-death experience allowing her to now see and hear the ghosts. As you can imagine they’re constantly trying to give her advice, tell her what to do, tell her what not to do, ask for her help to put on the TV so they can watch their favorite programs, turn the pages of books they want to read, and so on. Her husband can’t see them but believes they are there given his spouse’s behavior. He tries to interact with them, and sometimes they attempt to interact back with hilarious results. A few of the ghosts have a limited ability to interact with the physical world. One can affect electricity (lights going on and off), another can cause some smell if she passes through a human, and another can move a small object with one of his fingers if he tries really hard.
The back stories of the ghosts are explored in different episodes, so you get to see scenes of their lives back-in-the-day. Those who became ghosts beforehand bear witness to these scenes, and in one hilarious episode the ghosts disagree on what’s going on given they all had different perspectives on a string of events. I’m being purposefully vague here so as not to leak any spoilers. The stories are both humorous and heart-warming despite the macabre circumstances surrounding some of the deaths. The cast is superb. Did I already say that? It’s a light-hearted comedy for heavy times. I highly recommend Ghosts, the BBC version!
P.S. One odd inconsistency is that the ghosts can interact normally with furniture, sitting on chairs, and lying down on beds. And they are affected by gravity as usual. That makes the actors’ jobs much easier but it begs the question: Do these ghosts have mass? And how exactly does ghostly stuff interact with matter?
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