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Blithe Spirit ( Sky/ NOW TV, from Friday)

Mention Blithe Spirit and most people will think either of the much-loved 1945 David Lean film starring Rex Harrison and Margaret Rutherford, or the regularly revived, audiencepleasing Noël Coward play on which it is based.

But now there’s a new version coming to a digital download service near you, and for those in need of having spirits lifted, it’s well worth a look. Yes, theatre director Edward Hall and his writing team have taken a few liberties with Coward’s lightweight plot but all the important bits are there and, visually, the 1937 setting is an Art Deco/ modernist delight.

Downton Abbey alumnus Dan Stevens (right, with Leslie Mann, Judi Dench and Isla Fisher) takes on the role of Charles Condomine, a successful author now suffering from writer’s block so badly that, in search of inspiration, he hires the scatty medium Madame Arcati (Dench) to hold a private seance. To the surprise of no one, little appears to happen – trance, fainting fit and crashing French windows aside – until Charles comes down for a nightcap and finds the ghost of his beautiful first wife waiting for him.

Elvira – now American and none the worse for it – has returned. Which certainly isn’t going to please his second wife, Ruth.

The comedy is a little broader than expected but Mann and Fisher are delicious as the feuding wives, Charles’s understandably divided romantic loyalties are better established and the reworked ending works rather well. Good fun.