‘Ghosts’ CBS has been featured in ‘Emmy Magazine‘ Issue 6 – 2023.
There have been ghostly comedies on TV before, but the Kerbys of Topper weren’t cult members, the spectral seafarer on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir never came out of the closet and the “car ghost” on My Mother the Car didn’t have a shard of glass protruding from her head. And, for sure, they weren’t as naughty as the deceased denizens of the hit CBS
sitcom Ghosts.Based on the popular British series of the same name and adapted by coshowrunners and executive producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, Ghosts tells the story of freelance journalist Samantha (Rose Mclver) and her chef husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who leave New York City to become innkeepers when she inherits a rundown manor house upstate.
What makes the show work, though, is not the ghosts’ outrageousness, but their “verisimilitude,” Wiseman says. “Everyone is adept at doing their character, but in a way that you don’t feel like it’s someone in a costume on a sketch show.” Plus, Port adds, “Rose and Utkarsh do a great job of grounding the show.”
For the eight main ghosts, this success has been the answer to a prayer.
“We’re a cast of veteran actors who have been working for a long time, and this is our first big break, so there’s a lot of humility,” says Sheila Carrasco, who plays the darling-but-daft hippie, Flower. “We’re all isolated together up in Montreal,” adds Rebecca Wisocky, who portrays the Gilded Age ghost, Hetty Woodstone. “From the very first table read, we were all amazed at how much we just naturally enjoy one another’s company.”
In fact, the camaraderie of these ghosts is so genuine, it’s scary.
A near-death experience grants Samantha the power to interact with the departed, from an eleventh-century Viking to a ’90s Wall Street player, all of whom passed away on the property in their respective eras. Thanks to these flamboyant phantoms, things
around Woodstone Mansion are never dead.Ghosts is executive-produced by coshowrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman with Mathew Baynton, Jim Howick, Simon Farnaby, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond and Martha Howe-Douglas; Alison Carpenter, Debra Hayward and Alison Owen for Monumental Television; and Angie Stephenson for BBC Studios. The series is a production of CBS Studios in association with Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios’ Los Angeles production arm.
