In April 2019, Ghosts premiered on BBC One. A lively family sitcom about a haunted house, it was an instant hit, and the first episode was watched by five and a half million people. Tomorrow, five series later, the programme is coming to an end. To its devoted fans – including the BBC, which told the series’ creators that it would keep commissioning Ghosts if they wanted to write more – it feels premature.
“It does feel absolutely mad to bring to a close something you love doing with people that you love, that you’re really proud of, that the audience likes, and the channel still wants,” says Mathew Baynton, who co-writes the series alongside the Them There ensemble (the collective behind CBBC’s Horrible Histories and the Sky sitcom Yonderland, which also includes Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, and Ben Willbond). He stars in it too, as the ghost of Regency-era Romantic poet Thomas Thorne.
The 42-year-old actor, who has charmed viewers with his character’s forlorn declarations of unrequited love over five series, screws his face into a grimace. “Even as I express that, I’m thinking: ‘What the f**k have you done?’”
The worry is fleeting, though, and Baynton is taking any upset over his and his fellow creators’ decision to wrap up the series as praise. “We’re absolutely certain we’ve done the right thing,” he says. “Five [series] is quite a lot by modern standards. I take it as a huge compliment that anyone suggests we’re ending it unexpectedly early.”
For the uninitiated – though you must surely be in the minority by now – Ghosts follows a young woman, Alison (Charlotte Ritchie), who moves into her ancestral pile, the once-grand-now-dilapidated Button House, with her husband Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) after learning she is related to aristocracy. When she suffers a bump on the head, she is suddenly allowed to see and communicate with the ghosts who occupy her home.
Each episode tells a different story involving one of these spirits and occasionally, we’ll learn the specifics of how each one died. As well as Thomas, there’s Georgian noblewoman Kitty (Lolly Adefope), trouserless 80s MP Julian (Farnaby), Scout leader Pat (Howick), caveman Robin (Rickard), Second World War army Captain (Willbond) and Alison’s relative Lady Fanny Button (Howe-Douglas). Others make fleeting appearances – the head of a decapitated Tudor, a group of poor souls buried in a Plague pit in the basement – and until series four, Stath Lets Flats’ Katy Wix played a woman burned to death on suspicion of being a witch.
The fifth and final series was released as a box set on BBC iPlayer at the beginning of October, so the most dedicated fans already know how the show comes to an end. But those who have been watching weekly on Friday evenings have one question on their minds: will Alison and Mike sell Button House and leave the ghosts behind forever?
“We wanted to do what was right for the show, as opposed to what’s going to be the most surprising or just doing what people would want,” says Baynton of working out how to best conclude, as he talks to me from his home in Essex, where he lives with his wife and two young children. “It was about taking our ego out of the equation.”
The result is an understated, subtle finale that strikes just the right balance between funny and poignant. It’s certainly not a conclusive ending to the ghosts’ story, which by their incorporeal nature, could go on forever. And it’s just as well – since my conversation with Baynton, the BBC has announced a Christmas special is on the way.
Born in Southend-on-Sea, Baynton has a degree in drama as well as professional clownery training from École Philippe Gaulier in Paris, named after the man The New York Times dubbed the “Dumbledore of Clowning”, who also counts Sacha Baron Cohen, Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter among his former students. Baynton met the comedians and writers who would become Them There when they were recruited to either write or star in the 2009 children’s sketch show Horrible Histories, based on Terry Deary’s bestselling books.
I wouldn’t describe him as a typical clown – he’s well-spoken, considerate and at times even shy – but the silly roles he has played (particularly in Horrible Histories: a rapping King Charles II, an 80s detective investigating the death of a Stone Age man) do require a certain level of unselfconscious buffoonery.
Them There started writing Ghosts after watching Danny Dyer’s famous episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, in which he discovered he had royal blood, which directly inspired Alison’s uncovering of her own aristocratic family history. The various stories of how each ghost died were to be the bedrock of the series, though early iterations were far from the cheeky-but-still-family-friendly version millions know and love today. One would expect viewing figures to have dwindled after being on TV for four years, but 5.93 million watched last year’s Christmas special.
“We liked the idea of them being stuck in the most humiliating position you could possibly die in,” says Baynton. “The politician character originally had studded leather underpants and a ball gag in his mouth. The poet was going to be a bit more of a gigolo – because ghosts can walk through walls it made sense that one of them would be a peeper.”
Baynton is proud the series found a home in the BBC. “I just really, really believe in public broadcasting,” he says with passion. “There can be a temptation for government figures to feel like it’s paid for with tax money and therefore, it shouldn’t be criticising the government that distributes that tax. But it’s not a state broadcaster.”
He stalls and shifts in his chair, avoiding eye contact with me; it’s clear that Baynton is uncomfortable with sharing these thoughts with a journalist, no matter how much his Twitter account is filled with opinions on everything from his disappointment in the current government to his despair over climate change.
But nonetheless he says, “I believe these things and I’m very willing to go on the record. My genuine experience in life is that when you talk to people face-to-face about things – even if you’re coming from different sides of an argument – you tend to find more common ground… common ground is never found through the reading of a single sensational headline.”
His wariness is warranted; Baynton has been on the sticky end of a media storm. Last year he spoke at the Oxford Union and was asked whether he’d do anything differently in Horrible Histories if he were making the programme today. “It’s a really interesting question,” says Baynton reluctantly (“I can’t believe I’m talking about this; do I want to open this up again?” he had pondered moments earlier). “I said I think possibly, if you were making that show now, you wouldn’t put all-over spray tan on and play Egyptians.”
The backlash was immediate. “Are spray tans really racist?” wrote a columnist in The Telegraph, while The Times’ headline read “Mathew Baynton regrets his horrible history of dark skin sketches”.
“It was a brilliantly eye-opening thing to be at the centre of because it really taught me how far out of context things can be taken,” says Baynton. “Now when you Google me it’s one of the top things that comes up. If someone’s considering me for a part and they don’t know me at all and they’ve never seen the show, they might think, ‘This guy used to black up. We have to go with someone else.’ It’s just not true.
“The culture wars have really corrupted our ability to be nuanced about anything; everything is reduced to bite-sized chunks. There is a great temptation for people to believe that you should be on one side or the other and there isn’t any middle ground. And there really is – there’s grey areas all over the shop.”
The experience has made Baynton wary of the fame side of his job. “There’s a bit of personal conflict about that at times. Fame is a currency, and it can create opportunities as an actor. That higher profile opens doors to parts,” he says. “I just don’t really have it in me to play that game. I’m glad I don’t. It makes me uncomfortable. The worst I get is people surreptitiously taking pictures of me. I don’t like that.”
Unfortunately for him, he’s about to become a lot more recognisable. Next month he’ll star in Wonka, the Timothee Chalamet-led prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, though due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes he can’t say much about it (actors aren’t allowed to promote projects that would bring money to the studios involved). He also makes an appearance in the BBC’s Christmas adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy and has a role in the TV version of Holly Jackson’s incredibly popular YA mystery novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, due to be broadcast on BBC Three in the near future.
Then from January, he’ll be in Stratford-upon-Avon playing Bottom in the RSC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I was slightly scared as we were finishing Ghosts that people might have kind of forgotten that I’m an actor for hire outside of the group,” says Baynton. “But it’s good to feel that way every now and again. It galvanises you to get busy.”
And don’t worry, the end of Ghosts doesn’t mean it’s the end of Them There’s work together. “We’re not over as a group,” Baynton assures me. “We’re already talking about what we might do together next.”
The final episode of Ghosts is on BBC One tomorrow at 8.30pm. All episodes are streaming on BBC iPlayer.