What to watch this weekend: ‘Ghosts’ is dead funny

Do you believe in ghosts? … Now imagine you did, and imagine that you share your home with a motley crew of historical beings, all from different periods.

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Now, stretch your thinking and contemplate this bunch of beings disrupting much of your life and falling in love with reality television.

Ghosts on Netflix serves up three seasons of near-slapstick hilarity, with a fourth instalment set to stream soon. Ghosts is an adaptation of the original British comedy and is already into its fifth season on US network television.

The show follows Sam and Jay, a young New York couple who inherit a dilapidated country mansion, Woodstone Manor, and decide to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. Their plans segue unexpectedly when Sam falls down the stairs, suffers a near-death experience and wakes up able to see and communicate with the ghosts who have inhabited the property for centuries.

And there it begins. The couple’s new housemates are a bizarre collection of characters, including a Viking, a colonial militiaman, a Prohibition-era jazz singer, a hippie, a wealthy Victorian socialite, and a 1990s finance executive who doesn’t wear pants.

Yuppie ghost does not wear pants

So while Sam can see and hear them, Jay can’t, leaving him permanently excluded from conversations with the departed. Eventually, Sam starts relaying the ghostly chinwags to him, and from the get-go, the situational comedy starts pushing the envelope of crazy.

As the couple tries to renovate the mansion and run their business, the ghosts interfere with almost every aspect of their lives because they don’t want other people coming to stay in their rooms. Because, see, every ghost has their own spot in the mansion already.

There’s loads of clashing personalities, historical differences and the absurdities of sharing a home with people who have been dead for centuries.

Watch the trailer

Now, if you remember shows like Alf, where the strange brown alien joins a human family, or the Drew Barrymore hit Santa Clarita Diet, where she becomes a human flesh-eating zombie, you’re in good company. Fans of The Haunted Hotel will love this show, too.

Watching Ghosts takes a wee bit of initial patience and television resilience, though.

The first two episodes are almost a slight turn-off because the performances and the premise are so unusual. And the show doesn’t do a great job of introducing the whole bang shoot in stages. Instead, you’re right into it all, immediately, and the overacting is much until you realise that it’s the intent.

It’s not as forced as, for example, the performances in Orkney Snork Nie, and the dialogue is certainly a whole lot smarter; and after the initial speed bump you’ll be glad you stayed for the sucker-punch funnies.

Super slapstick funny

There’s a lot of innuendo in between it all. Grown up slapstick jokes like the ‘sucked off’ notion where, of course, the showrunners want you to think exactly what you are thinking of now.

Except of course, it means that ghosts get to leave purgatory on earth and get swept up to, well, ostensibly heaven. And there’s a lot more where this came from. It’s really, really funny.

You’ve just got to allow the series in, because otherwise you will not enjoy it.

Ghosts is different. It’s smart slapstick where every moment in the show is intentional. What is seriously refreshing is that this is not a sitcom that tries to teach life lessons along the way. Think Modern Family. Think Who’s the Boss, Friends, and a whole bunch of other titles.

Hell no, this show has the gutsy nihilism of Seinfeld, the edginess of Oliver Stone and the cream pie in the face sensibility of real escapism comedy.

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