What Ho wee readers, and welcome to another Wee Writing Blog series: Morality and the Afterlife: or the Narrative Shakiness of a fixed Moral centre in CBS’ Ghosts. Yes, this was originally going to be just one long arse post but I soon realised that due to me getting very, very sick halfway through completing it I was not going to be able to get it out in anywhere near a reasonable time , at least not in its whole form. So here we are, I shall release this in instalments which will hopefully give me enough time to recover before I have to write the last segment. Also I hope you’re all familiar with Ghosts, both it’s BBC original and it’s CBS adaption, because my fever tells me I’m not using this introduction to explain it. So, we’ll wait a second for all the confused people in the audience to give it a quick Google…..okay, you caught up? Good, then let us begin. Enjoy 😉

Lore & the Expanded Season

While adapting an originally British show for an American audience comes with many necessary changes, often the most impactful – at least in the long run – is the longer seasons. Namely while say the original might have only five or six episodes to fill each season, the American adaptation can have potentially over twenty. While I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, Ghosts is certainly not one of them. Which for the most part I actually think works in its favour, as it forces the writers to very quickly leave behind the crutch of recycling plots from the original British show. As while I do think both shows are legitimately good television, there was just something so quick and sharp about the British show’s humour, particularly in the early seasons – and unfortunately for the American adaption, especially the pilot – that trying to replicate it would be a losing battle for anyone. Unfortunately this lead to the question of what exactly they were going to fill these extra episodes with if not American distillation of familiar plot threads from the BBC show? Sometimes the answer was Romantic plot lines – I did particularly like that unlike his British counterpart Isaac is actually allowed to come out of the closet, even if I think he could do better than that fake Brit Nigel. Other times it was Sitcom hijinks, or looks into the very unique pasts of the Ghosts – less of that than I would have liked as more emphasis has been put on the lives of the livings, which is a choice that will always baffle me. All of these decent choices to fill their seasons with… and then there’s the Ghost lore.

Look I’m a geek, so I’m not in theory opposed to expanding the lore of the world. But the original was actually quite unique in how little the ghosts actually knew about the state of their existence. They knew they were trapped where they died, that they could walk and fall through walls, but somehow sit in chairs. They knew animals could see them, and sometimes small children. They knew they could move on but not specifically what made someone do so or where they went. And that was about it, and what made that so unique was that there was no indication that either we the audience or the ghosts themselves would ever learn anything more. Ghosts existed and our main character could see them, but that was about it. The mechanics of ghost hood were less important than the personal histories and relationships of the ghosts themselves.

That being said the Lore in the CBS version doesn’t distract from that element – which is still there in this adaptation, despite the emphasis being on the livings rather than the naturally more interesting dead people – and was usually used more as way to enable personal conflicts and storylines rather than just being lore for lore’s sake. Such as Thor and Flower being trapped in the Ghost trap to force them to confront their feelings for each other.

Or it was used to introduce a new ghost, that didn’t necessarily have to become a permeant fixture of the cast. Such as the teenage ghost in the attic that sleeps most of the year, or the Car ghost. Although even I will admit we got into silly territory when we brought back Hetty’s maid through the use of her feather duster. And then there is Elias…oh dear lord…Elias. Hetty’s (the American counterpart to Lady Button in the BBC version) philandering husband. Who gets trapped in a Ghost proof vault when he dies (an interesting addition but more used as an explanation for why he hasn’t been there the whole time) and at the end of the episode (spoilers) gets sent straight to hell. So yeah, that’s a part of the lore now.

Heaven & Hell, Cemented Reality Now

It’s notable that Hell being a real tangible thing that the Ghosts have to fear is something that was introduced solely for the CBS adaption. It is not in the original, neither is heaven really. Oh ghosts get surrounded by a light and seem to float up and away somewhere when they ‘get sucked off’ but as I noted before, they don’t actually know where they go. It’s assumed it’s a good place, but I find it very interesting that none of the Ghosts ever assume it is the traditional picture of Heaven.

To be fair, though heaven is confirmed as one hundred percent as real as hell in season 2 of the CBS adaptation , details of it are kept deliberately vague. In fact so are details of hell for that matter, with Elias describing it as “mostly emails, and zooms that should have been emails,” but the fact that we even get confirmation that they are called ‘hell’ and ‘heaven’ at all and that they very much exist is interesting.

Because not only does this give metaphysical consequences for the ghosts’ character growth or lack there of – which again did not exist in the original – this is the first time we’re shown a religion not just getting something right (such as the exorcism in season one) but being bang on the money about large parts of the afterlife. And the fact that it’s this one is understandable but somewhat disappointing. Look I know that Christianity is not the only religion in the world that believes in a heaven and a hell, it’s not even the only Abrahamic one, but it is the one that’s had the most influence on America pop culture’s depiction of the afterlife, so it’s highly likely it’s that version they’re talking about.

Of course this is a Christian Afterlife through the lens of American Pop culture, so the actual details don’t matter as much the perceived requirements. Namely being what modern people consider a good person. And why do I put such emphasise on modern, I’m so glad you asked. Not only is what constitutes a good person entirely dependent- at least as far as wider values go – on the culture that is asking the question, but for some cultures that wasn’t even a requirement for getting into the ‘good version’ of the afterlife. And why, you might be asking, is this relevant? Again, an excellent question from the audience. It’s relevant dear reader, because Ghosts has a character from one of those kinds of cultures.

His name’s Thor and he’s a Viking.

Join me next time to hear his story.

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