31 Days of Halloween: Ghosts (US)

2021, CBS -- download

This American remake of a charming but not deep British series, starring Rose McIver (iZombie) and Utkarsh Ambudkar (Free Guy) is... well... not very good. But we watched three episodes before truly settling on that.

The premise is simple enough. Young couple inherits a mouldering mansion from a dead relative that happens to be haunted by many MANY ghosts of past inhabitants. Samantha falls down and bangs her head, and hereafter can see and communicate with the ghosts. At first the ghosts want nothing but to drive her and Jay, the husband, out of the house, but once they know they can talk to her, they backtrack.

The ghosts come from all ages. There is an American Revolutionary guy, a 90s Wall Street guy, a Viking, a 20s flapper, a 60s hippy, an stodgy Edwardian (?) dame, and let us not forget Scout (as in Boy) with an arrow through his neck. Sam and Jay are going to renovate the place into a B&B / hotel which consternates the ghosts (so many livings!) but what can they do.

Oh! Let us also not forget the Cholera Victims in the Cellar. They are the best thing about both series.

The British version was weird, quirky as expected and not very good unto itself, but at least it had its typical wonky British charm. I especially like the caveman Robin with his wonky proto-European accent and strong knowledge of the American space program -- they can watch the Internet over people's shoulders. The replacement for him is a rather droll, but more educated (he doesn't seem to let death stop him from paying attention) Indigenous man in a likely offensive stereotypical Indian outfit (Hell, it might actually be accurate for all I know, but it looks like a Halloween costume off of Amazon), but I miss the dumb fun of a caveman.

The primary difference I noticed between the shows, besides the Americanisms, is the way that the lead Sam is played (as opposed to her British equivalent Allison) -- she is just so unabashedly chipper and nice. Allison comes off as nice, but annoyed by the ghosts constantly sticking their noses full of bad judgement into her business. They are dead, she is not -- she takes precedence, but they don't get that, or there wouldn't be a sitcom. Also, British hubby is a bit of a dumbbell, while Jay is inoffensive in a way only an American can be portrayed. And really, it is the mains that make a dumb sitcom comedy.

I guess we might watch more? Who am I kidding, we probably will. Afterall we watched most of The Big Bang Theory.