Ghosts (US): Pilot; Hello! (episodes 1 and 2)

October 8, 2021 4:01 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

Samantha and Jay throw both caution and money to the wind when they decide to convert a rundown country estate they inherited into a bed & breakfast -- only to find it's inhabited by the many opinionated spirits of deceased residents who now call it home. (CBS remake of the BBC original)

This thread is for the 2021 Ghosts (imdb link) series.


Variety - CBS Sitcom ‘Ghosts’ Takes Its Time Finding Own Charming Voice Outside British Original: "In its first couple episodes, however, CBS’ “Ghosts” hew so close to the BBC’s that entire scenes are repeated almost verbatim. It’s admittedly rare for a sitcom to find its feet as quickly as the American “Ghosts” does, no doubt because it’s got a fairly malleable outline to follow that’s already proven successful. So while it’s genuinely jarring to watch this iteration of “Ghosts” if you’ve seen its British inspiration, if you have not … well, it’s charming enough to merit sticking around, anyway, especially as it begins to find its own way in a third episode completely divorced from the show’s source material."

TV Line Review: Please Watch This Quirky CBS Gem Before It Disappears

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posted by oh yeah! (3 comments total)

Oh, neat, it posted correctly after all - I was worried the thread was going to show up under the BBC Ghosts Fanfare show.

Anyway, I thought this was a promising start. Having watched all 3 seasons of the original BBC version on HBO Max, it is little weird watching this one, as it's such a mish-mosh. Like, they've changed a lot of the ghosts (Viking instead of caveman, stock dude-bro instead of Tory politician) but re-assigned character traits (no more ghost poet pining after the lead, but stock dude-bro hitting on her instead). And I'm thinking they're going to regret stock dude-bro being commando instead of just pants-less -- I thought it was kind of odd how the bottom edge of his shirt seemed sewn together instead of having the usual flappiness of the cloth below the last button, until the comedy reveal of his blurred-out junk. But it means the actor's never going to get to just causally lounge around the way his BBC counterpart did, he's always going to have to be strategically blocked.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:25 PM on October 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

It took a while to click that the female lead was Liv Moore from the zombie morgue show. Seeing dead people (or their memories) is a weird kind of typecasting, but I like it so far. This show is just about equivalent to the original in terms of the dumb/silly/cute triangle.

Remakes are odd, but I think we'll give it a chance. It will take a lot for Viking to live up to caveman's standard, though.
posted by Acari at 8:17 AM on October 16, 2021

Episode 3 was pretty Viking-centric, and didn't borrow much of anything from the BBC scripts that I noticed, so, so far so good. (Also, the headless ghost was nowhere to be seen in the episode; judging from the poster art, he's been dropped down the memory hole.)
posted by oh yeah! at 1:31 PM on October 16, 2021