Ghosts series two review – another dose of high-spirited silliness

The wonderfully barmy Ghosts (BBC One) is back for a second series, and it remains a riot of high-energy slapstick and silliness. To recap: young, broke couple Mike and Alison were thrown a lifeline in the hellish business of trying to find an affordable home, when Alison’s distant relative died and left her a majestic manor called Button House. However, the inheritance came with some hitchhikers, in the form of the restless spirits of many of the house’s previous inhabitants. I have seen so many estate agent listings for outrageously priced flats with toilets in the kitchen, beds suspended from the ceiling and a view that consists of a window into another box room, that at this stage I would take all of the ghosts that history could fling at me.

After a bumpy beginning, the first series settled the differences between humans and spectres, to some extent, and the living couple have found something approaching harmony with their less corporeal counterparts. Their dream of selling Button Hall and turning it into a five-star hotel and spa has hit the bumpers, what with the plague pit in the basement putting off potential buyers, and money is tighter than ever. They decide to rent out some of the bigger rooms for events, but the trouble is, well, the ghosts. This is, essentially, the crux of every episode, but the writing is so sharp that it almost always feels fresh.

When a photographer arrives to take some promotional shots of the building (“If you could avoid the bad bits,” pleads Alison. “What, all of them?” he replies), we discover that Lady Fanny Button is more photogenic than the rest of the pack, and has a habit of making her presence known whenever a lens is pointing at her. A photo of her spectral form at the window goes viral. “No one wants a haunted wedding,” complains Alison, which suggests that she has not wasted many hours of her life watching Don’t Tell the Bride, a programme that reveals there is no such thing as “a bit much” when it comes to a wedding theme.

Eventually, Alison recognises the ghosts as a business opportunity and decides to monetise the hauntings. The trouble, again, is the ghosts. They refuse to perform on demand – apart from deceased Tory MP Julian, who died with his pants down and remains forever in that state. Julian will do some poltergeisty tricks, but only if he gets something in return. Inevitably, when crowds of ghost-hunters descend on Button House, there is a brilliantly tetchy standoff between the couple and their deceased housemates, who attempt to manipulate each other into showing off for each other’s benefit, badly, and with predictably shambolic results.

Visitors to the house rarely leave on good terms, but it is satisfying to watch the “podder, blogger, vlogger and psylogger” (psychic blogger) who chats to a spirit guide called Tony get the full brunt of the ghosts’ near-heroically awful hauntings. As ever, it all trots along at a wicked pace. The fact that Fanny is called Fanny is regularly called upon as a punchline, and this stands as a good measure of one’s tolerance for the humour. I confess that it never once lost its ability to make me cackle like a schoolkid (“Oh no! Fanny’s exposed!”, “A glimpse of Fanny”, etc). It also pulls off the rare trick of appealing to both children and adults; even though it is squarely aimed at the latter, its origins in the Horrible Histories stable means there is much to enjoy for all age groups. There has been talk of a US adaptation, though if it goes ahead, whether it can harness a humour that feels particular in its Britishness remains to be seen.

It helps that the cast is uniformly great, from the reluctant, gentle patience of Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe as Alison and Mike, to the spectrum of daftness that is the ghosts. Everyone will have their favourites, but I have a soft spot for Laurence Rickard as Robin the Caveman, whose pronunciation of “ticket” leaves a lot of room for interpretation. No scene is left unmined for gags,with jokes that are clever and crude, often in the same breath, and an intelligence that is worn lightly. It is one of the least demanding sitcoms on television – and one of the most charming.