Ghosts

Ghosts follows a married couple, Sam and Jay, who have received some life-altering news. Sam's aunt died, and as she is the only living descendant, she has inherited the family mansion. Our couple decides to try converting their new property into a bed and breakfast. Their amateur attempts to renovate make the conversion and comfortable living seem impossible. 

To add a spanner in the works, this mansion isn't an ordinary building. The structure and the surrounding area are home to a sizeable number of ghosts. At first, the ghosts' presence doesn't register with the mansion's new inhabitants. On the other hand, the ghosts feel their peaceful lives have been disrupted. The ghosts form a plan to haunt Sam and Jay out of the house. It includes knocking over a vase by the only ghost who can physically interact with the human world, Trevor, a charismatic former stockbroker.  Long story short, the haunting largely fails but Sam trips on the vase and hits her head. Her injury somehow causes her to be clairvoyant. 

Herein lies the comedy of this series.  Sam can interact with the ghosts whereas Jay can only communicate with them via her. The ghosts are demanding of the couple and every episode contains an A or B plot that either gets our couple into a complicated situation thanks to the ghosts or the ghosts get into complicated interpersonal situations among themselves. 

It pays to not ask too many questions about the science behind the interaction of the ghost and the human worlds. The answers to all of the ghost mysteries largely remain unknown to both the living and dead. It also doesn't matter. The fun of the series is in uncovering some of the unforeseen consequences of the haunting of Sam and Jay's bed and breakfast. Every ghost has their own special power. Some are revealed up front, for example, Thor the Viking's ability to manipulate light, but others are revealed as you move through the series. 

I was introduced to the series through my boyfriend Haoie who would put the show on in the background. This isn't a slight to the quality of the show, for Haoie most TV shows are background noise. He was deep into season three by the time I started watching it with him. From an outsider's perspective, Ghosts is a weird premise for a show. I just couldn't make sense of Isaac, a ghost who brushed shoulders with the founding fathers in his lifetime, getting a lap dance from a live stripper who couldn't even see him. But when you understand the dynamics of the show the absurdity of it all falls into place. 

When the first and second seasons of the show made it to Netflix I was all in. After watching the first few episodes I fell in love with the whacky and heartwarming show. I binged all the episodes over the weekend and rapidly moved on to seasons three and four. I'm now sadly all up to date. The imaginative writing is one of the things that makes the show so special.  The story's premise makes for a great sitcom. With an ensemble cast of ghosts, every individual background can be explored.  Family members can come for a visit. Ghost powers can be revealed. The twists and turns of the stories often meet the hype. 

The other reason I love this show is that it is a genuine feel-good show. Over time, and after multiple ghost-highjinks, Sam and Jay realise they can't leave the mansion even if they want to. They have all become part of a family. This also relates to those of us who aren't close to our own families. Sam, who isn't close with her father and whose mother has passed away, finds community in her haunted house. As a viewer, I have grown to love and root for every character. Just when you think Ghosts is all silly fun, it will hit you right in the heart.