Ghosts was dead: to begin with. The hit supernatural sitcom – set around an absurd spectral house share – came to an end on the BBC in 2023 after five series of delighting kids and adults alike. The ratings were strong. The show had inspired numerous international remakes. Yet, “as far as we were concerned,” says Mathew Baynton, part of the creative sextet who all write and star in Ghosts, “we were done. We had made a clear decision to end it on a high.”
Eventually, after a long discussion about why a film couldn’t work – after stressing that such a film would need the right cinematic twist, that it couldn’t just be a long episode of television – they hit upon the idea that solved all their problems. What if a group of kids broke into Button House with a Ouija board? And what if, in using said Ouija board, one of the ghosts was able to possess a living body and escape the house? “We went from, ‘What’s the point in doing a film for the sake of it?’ to ‘We desperately want to do this,’” says Baynton. “It was now an itch we had to scratch.”
“He would be devastated about the Tory party today,” says Farnaby. “When I was growing up, I was quite arty and left-wing and the enemy was the Tories – Michael Heseltine, John Major and so on. But to Julian they would seem pretty left-wing now, certainly compared to Nigel Farage.” Would Julian ever consider Reform? “Absolutely not,” he says. “He’s Conservative, but he’s a centre-ground Conservative.”
“There could have been a whole film in Julian reacting to the modern world,” adds Baynton. “But it would have really bloated the middle! Plus, some of our ideas would have taken it into a different certification in terms of the BBFC. We all know how he died, let’s put it that way.”
“You cannot underestimate a child’s ability to get a more sophisticated joke,” says Farnaby, musing on the lessons learnt from writing Paddington 2, “but you have to remember that adults are kids at heart as well. It’s about giving kids more respect and adults less respect!”
Yet turning a half-hour sitcom into a feature-length movie posed a different kind of challenge for the team. On the show, episodes would be assigned to pairs, who would then go away and write a draft before bringing the script back to the group. The Possession of Button House, however, required all of their input.
There was also the balancing act of, “making sure everyone has a storyline,” says Farnaby, “because we have Jack’s friends, plus [returning humans] Mike and Alison. There’s about 12 characters who need servicing!”
All of which leads to a dizzyingly silly, high-stakes finale: a sprawling cinematic set-piece that more than justifies the big-screen treatment. Watching it, one wonders: could this be the first of many Ghosts movies? “I don’t know,” says Farnaby. “Ghosts aren’t supposed to age, so that’s a challenge!”
“Hopefully people will go and see this, and then who knows?” says Farnaby. “But we all want to continue working together, whether that be TV or film,so there will be more to come from us, because we’re such great friends. It’s a quality-of-life thing, working together.”
And assuredly, given the subject matter, quality-of-death.
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