Everyone has a favourite ghost in Ghosts. Mine, in direct opposition to my feelings in the bloodless world of the living, is Julian. Simon Farnaby’s Teflon-coated sleazy Tory (distinguishing feature: no trousers) died mid-shag with an MP called Lindsay during a 90s fundraiser. He is such a blowhard that he is the only ghost in Britain’s friendliest haunted house who can move things – if he concentrates really hard and makes a ridiculous amount of noise. With his pants down.
Anyway, Julian is on top form in the Christmas special (BBC One), which is as much of a hot-water bottle for the heart as you would expect it to be. He rails against the rough sleeper who has pitched his tent on Button Hall’s land: “I don’t want to sound all not-in-my-back-yard, but you really don’t want one in your own back yard.” Then he does a U-turn. Which, of course, is really a lie: “I’m no liberal, but ejecting a vagrant at Christmas? I would never, ever stoop so low!”
Most yuletidey of all, Julian teaches the other ghosts how to lie. Who knew that nothing would get me more in the mood for Christmas 2021 than a gentle, family-friendly, completely on-the-nose jibe about dissembling Tories? “There is nothing that can’t be lied about,” he brags, smashing his knuckles into his palm. “Or rather, there is no truth that cannot be avoided.” When lying, Julian concludes, it is best to answer a question with another question. “Does that actually work?” asks Pat whose questions tend more towards the annual Christmas quiz. “Do you want it to work?” Julian bats back. “See!”
This is everything you want from a Christmas special. It is funny, festive and features Jennifer Saunders channelling Mrs Bennet as Lady Fanny’s overbearing mother, which is without a shadow of a doubt the most sparkly sentence I have written this season. It is also perfect casting; Martha Howe-Douglas’s Fanny, with her chin-wattling expressions and overstated grandeur, is clearly modelled on vintage French and Saunders sketches.
Ghosts, which rose like the dead from Horrible Histories, has always done a fine line in backstories and this one is a doozy. Fanny, it turns out, was a young mathematical genius (check out her yorkshire pudding long division if you don’t believe me) who desperately wanted to help her father escape penury. But her Edwardian mother – Saunders – was more interested in keeping up appearances and marrying her off to the next rich sod. When their house was repossessed at Christmas, Fanny was forced to marry the wayward son of rich cousins the Buttons to save them from the streets. We know how that one turned out, what with her being thrown out of the window by her gay husband and all. My only criticism of this tragic tale? The missed opportunity. Dawn French would have been the perfect bailiff.
The old-fashioned – indeed, Christian – message entwined through it all like tinsel is about helping those less fortunate than ourselves. Everyone reacts to the homeless man differently. Alison wants him to stay and microwaves him a cottage pie (which he gives to his dog because “I lost my house, not my tastebuds”). Mike fears he will ruin their “quiet Cooper Christmas” and toys with calling the police. Then we learn his backstory. He is ex-navy (“civilians with fancy hats!” exclaims the Captain), his name is Nicholas, he makes a mean haricot bean stew, he has a dog called Rudy and he wears a red beanie. No wonder Kitty, who is basically festive spirit in the spectral form of a Georgian noble, thinks he is Father Christmas. All she wants for Christmas is a tiny, singing-and-dancing Santa with a saxophone reduced online from £14.99 to £11.24. It is in such pathetic details that Ghosts scales the heady – or should I say headless? – heights.
Ghosts is like the best roast potatoes – soft on the inside and Christmassy all year round. Partly, it is the subject matter: ghosts have been festive since Dickens sent one to sort out Ebenezer Scrooge. But it is also the feelings this classic British sitcom – and how many of those do we have at the moment? – induces. Three gloriously silly series in, Ghosts remains hilarious, erudite and sweet, with a gag ratio so high, and of such consistently high quality, that even a joke about lying politicians can make you feel all warm, fuzzy and – sorry, there is no other word for it – irreparably British inside.
Yes, I experience curious and long-latent feelings of pride when I watch Ghosts. Indeed, Button Hall may be among the last safe spaces in this country where it is OK to resurrect long-dead feelings of nostalgia (even if it is plagued by ghosts who never shut up). How spooky is that?
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