Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Rose McIver, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Richie Moriarty, Danielle Pinnock, Asher Goodman, Rebecca Wisocky, Sheila Carrasco, Devan Chandler Long, Román Zaragosa, Tristan D. Lalla, John Hartman, Arthur Holden, Nigel Downer, Stuart Fink, Betsy Sodaro, Mark Linn-Baker, Kathryn Greenwood, Christian Daoust, Cody Crain, Cat Lemieux, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Odessa A’zion.

It is a curious proposition that any show, especially comedy, that is a big hit in Britain, can face a clamour of public calls for it to be remade for the American television market.

Few have transitioned well, The Inbetweeners sank without as much as a splash, Skins fell apart at a surface level, Cold Feet was abject, The U.S. version of the glorious Fawlty Towers (Payne) was, to be blunt, a crime against comedy, and the least mentioned about the various remakes that didn’t even make it past the ignominy of not even being commissioned after a pilot episode such as The Vicar of Dibley (The Minister of Divine), or Absolutely Fabulous (Ab Fab)….it makes the television viewer surely wonder if such transfers are not only lost in translation, but in perspective as well.

The flip side is that occasionally a premise will transfer and become a finer representation of the comedy skin it is inhabiting, The Office (US) in many ways outclasses its original, Whose Line Is it Anyway was willing to go farther into the spontaneous act of comedy than its British namesake, (despite having two of its starts appear constantly in both versions), and then there are the ones to whom the possibility of greatness awaits; even in the face of its namesake being one of the most uplifting comedies of the last 20 years, the sublime Ghosts.

To remake a series for a different kind of audience, even to one who share the commonality of language, can be fraught with danger, the jokes don’t always land, the situation falls flat, but in Ghosts it seems the spirits are alive enough to create mayhem on both sides of the Atlantic, and one which in many ways is great news for fans of the series and all things comically spooky.

There is more than a passing resemblance between the two series to keep fans of the original intentionally pleased, and whilst perhaps one of the British versions more popular characters, the caveman Robin, is replaced by the appearance of a forgotten Viking warrior named Thorfinn, and therefore subduing the text on how much a pre-historic man can become enlightened, the rest of the cast offer a sense of continuality between the shows.

The characters in the US version are compliments to the original vision laid out by the show’s creators, namely the vast majority of the ghostly cast inhabiting Button House, and even in the differences there is much joy to be found as each has their own particular idiosyncrasies that push the gentleness of the situation into the absurdly cool narrative and bind, they push Samantha and Jay into.

Chiefly though it is heartening to see the idea of the Captain expanded on. The uptight no nonsense stiff upper lip is replaced by the one foot out of the closet door of Isaac Higgentoot, the Revolutionary War veteran who is coming to terms with his love of the leader of the British in his final engagement, and who leaves a terrible smell in the air whenever a living person passes through him.

A well thought out character, as is the rest of the smashing ghostly cast, including the sublime Danielle Pinnock as the possibly murdered jazz singer Alberta, and Román Zaragosa’s framing of the Native American Sasappis.

Remakes are often best left untouched, left in the realms of the apparitions of what if, and yet some make it through, some occupy a space where others have feared to tread, and it works well, it works well enough to leave a smile on the face and laughter in the belly. Such is the fortune of Ghosts (US), for it has a rich history to draw upon.

Ian D. Hall