‘Bittersweet’ ending as Ghosts bids us farewell in a Christmas special
Ghosts BBC1, Christmas Day, 7.45pm
Ghosts are now firmly a part of Christmas, whether it’s the spirits haunting Ebeneezer Scrooge or the recent annual scary seasonal treat on BBC2 from actor and writer Mark Gatiss.
While you wouldn’t want to spend time with the spooks in A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No 249 (on BBC2 tonight), tomorrow sees the final outing for a very different gang of wraiths.
And they will be much missed. The residents of Button House are set to say goodbye in the final episode of much-loved sitcom Ghosts in what promises to be a bittersweet send-off.
The show first arrived on BBC2 four years ago and quickly became a favourite with viewers. After a move to BBC1, the first Christmas special arrived, so it seems fitting that the team are bowing out on Christmas Day. Co-creator Laurence Rickard, who also plays caveman Robin, said the ending – and the postscript – will be bittersweet.
“I think the nature of the show, because it’s about living people and dead people, you’re never going to have that ending of ‘they all move to Greece!’,” he said. “There’s an inherent division that we have to service so I suppose, in some ways, it was unavoidable that there was going to be a degree of melancholy. “It’s not like, ‘oh, they go their separate ways’. At the beginning of the pilot, in the greatest possible sense of the word, they’ve already gone their separate ways.”
Matthew Baynton, who wrote the series with Rickard, said the final episode being set during the festive season gave the sad farewell plenty of humour. “The obligation to make sure that we kept this episode Christmassy was a huge boon to the episode itself, because otherwise it would have been pretty straight down the line sad at the end – without much to kind of leaven that,” he said. “But the Christmassiness of it, I think, gives it the sweet against the bitter.”
Baynton went on to detail the careful thought that went into this concluding chapter, with all six creators – including himself, Rickard, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-douglas, Jim Howick and Ben Willbond – voicing their own ideas.
He explained: “We just wanted to do something that we all felt was a fitting end. And in many ways – I hope this doesn’t sound wrong – but no-one could love the show more than us.”
In the final episode, Mike’s mum, Betty, comes to stay and is soon driving both her son and Alison round the bend. Meanwhile, the ghosts try their best to help Robin get in a festive mood but may have to resort to drastic measures when extra decorations and festive music fail to do the trick.
Ghosts has been a success for fairly simple reasons, according to Baynton.
“On the face of it, it’s about ghosts, but it’s really just a metaphor for what it’s like to be a person,” he said. “You’re born into the world and everyone’s got different opinions about what everything means. To do that in a family sitcom always felt like an amazing trick to me.”