When Ghosts: Australia was announced, it might be fair to say that the idea was met with some trepidation. There have been numerous examples of comedy hits in one country failing to impress when adapted for another – anyone remember when they tried to do an American version of Kath and Kim? Yet Ghosts, based on the original UK series which ran from 2019 to 2023, has already been adapted once for American television, which is currently in its fifth season with a sixth still to come. While the shows are not plot for plot recreations – and how could they be, given that the premise relies very much on the history of a particular place – there are enough similarities in the concept to prove that it works.
The same goes for the Australian iteration. Kate (Tamala) and Sean (Rohan Witt), a young couple from one of Australia’s major cities (they don’t say which one) are house hunting in an appalling rental market, and are viewing an overpriced and extremely unhygienic apartment when Kate receives the news that a great-Uncle has died, leaving her a dilapidated mansion in the countryside. They go out to visit, discovering that her Great Uncle was a bit of a hoarder. But despite the mess and the work involved in making the house more liveable, there’s something about Ramshead Manor that Kate likes, and fed up with being treated like a diversity hire at the firm where she is a paralegal, she convinces Sean (who does something to do with computers and can therefore work remotely) that they should give up on the idea of living in ‘murdery’ inner city hovels and move into the free house that has fallen into their laps.
Sean is definitely less adept with fixing things around the house than he is comfortable with technology and science fiction novels, and so it is Kate who heads down to fix the fuses in the basement, and is in an accident which puts her in the hospital. Like Alison in the British version of the show, and Sam in the American, this accident brings her so close to death that, when she wakes up, she is able to see ghosts, meaning that her new home comes with a host of new roommates – the ghosts of previous inhabitants of the house who have, for whatever reason, failed to move on.
While the specific histories of the country where each version is set dictate the backstories for each of the ghosts, there are some archetypes that have been established for the show. There is always a windbag colonial officer type, in this case Gideon (Brent Hill), who was a contemporary of Captain Cook (and now walks around with a spear through his chest, leading to him being referred to as a human kebab). There is always a matriarch of the house, though in this case, Eileen (played by Mandy McElhinney) is a publican from the 1880s rather than a high society figure. And there is always one character who died without their pants on. Interestingly, our bare-bottomed ghost in the Australian version is Joon, a Chinese gold miner with both womanising tendencies and a bit of a vague nature, (most likely due to a blow on the head before his death) who combines the archetypes of several characters in the two preceding versions. The rest of the main ghosts at Ramshead include Satan, a bikie from the 1990s whose burnt face hints at the manner of his demise, Lindy, a semi-famous television aerobics instructor from the 1980s who seems oblivious to the myriad problems in her relationships with horrible men, and Miranda, a morose bride-to-be from 1919 who lays around on the couch talking about the novel she never got to write.
When the show was first announced, there was some speculation about whether or not they would handle the long history of Australia pre-colonisation well, particularly as none of the main ghosts were First Nations. Kate, however, who inherits the property, is, and the discussions she has with Sean (who is white) about ghosts and spirits and ancestors go some of the way to addressing this, often in extremely clever and entertaining ways. Leah Purcell, who was a contributing writer to the series, also plays Kate’s Mum for one episode, and the pair have great chemistry – even if the joke about the giant teacup/ chamber pot does go a little too far…
The moments where this show really works are those where the jokes don’t push too hard. Lindy (Michelle Brasier) is the character doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the early episodes of the show, as she attempts to win Kate over as her new best friend by explaining to her facets of ghost existence, and therefore laying out the world building for the show. Her bubbly personality and extreme ‘pick me’ energy make her both hilarious and endearing, and I am almost afraid to find out how she died. Joon (George Zhao) and Satan (Jackson Tozer) also get the tone just right for their characters. Maudlin Miranda (played by Ines English) takes a while to make much of an impression, and her bored, affected drawl and tendency to disparage others made her fairly irritating at first. Yet she is one of two characters who really develop and prove that viewer’s first impressions of them may be completely wrong once they become the subject of their own episode and the manner of their death is revealed. The other character is naval officer, Gideon, but to say much more might be spoiling proceedings.
Strangely, it is McElhinney, arguably one of the more well-known cast members, who I find the most out of key. Her overacting of an Irish woman who has led a hard life comes off more as a pantomime performance, and while this comes down to the writing of the show, Eileen’s ghost ‘power’ is a little crass; the accent also doesn’t sound quite right.
There are long-running jokes – a commonality across all three versions of the show – such as referring to ghosts completing their unfinished business being as being “sucked off” (with the more contemporary ghosts keeping the meaning of this to themselves, presumably for amusement) and of course, the fact that Sean, like Jay and Mike in the US and UK version of the show respectively, cannot see the Ghosts, and therefore must put up with his partner having all these conversations with people he cannot see or hear, which earns a certain comedic mileage. But there are the occasional moments where the jokes get over-explained, and for a show that is quite intelligent, it’s just unnecessary. It’s my hope that as the show develops and the team become more comfortable with what they’re working with, they’ll see that the audience is following the clues they’re leaving, and don’t need everything spelled out for them.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
All eight episodes of Ghosts Australia are now available to watch on Paramount+ or you can catch new episodes every Sunday on Ten Play.
