Ghosts might be one of the most popular comedies of modern times, but it owes a large debt to the biggest sitcom of them all, Friends.
That was the assertion of Charles Harrison, BBC Studios International Scripted Formats Producer, at Seriencamp today during a session about the international expansion of Ghosts. The series, originally from Monumental Television for the BBC in the UK, follows a young couple inherit a huge castle, only to find one of them can communicate with the various apparitions from history who already live there.
“What the castle is about is something very deep in the English psyche,” he said. “For the last 20 years in the UK all of our television has been about aspiring to own a home, to own a home in the country, or to do up a home, so the idea of winning a castle is the dream for English people. In this case, it means you’re never alone – and you end up with a flat-share comedy. The greatest flat-share comedy is Friends and this show is indebted to Friends.”
BBC Studios has been rolling the British comedy series out around the world, with CBS running its strong-rating version to four seasons, with two more to come. There have also been versions in Germany, where TV industry confab Seriencamp is being held this week, and France. Upcoming shows are being readied in Australia and Greece, and several others are understood to be in development.
Few comedies have multiple international remakes, and Harrison outlined his theory on why Ghosts has been a format success. “They key to it is a very simple idea,” he said. “It’s a flat share at the most basic level – a classic premise for a sitcom. Nobody really changes, nobody really learns anything and at the start of every episode the characters pretty much exactly the same.”
Friends isn’t the only classic sitcom that has helped Ghosts on its path, however. When French commercial broadcaster TF1 ordered Ghosts: Fantômes en Héritage, its writers took a page out of The Office‘s book. They noted they would follow the scripts of Ghosts‘ first season before branching off into their own direction, just like Greg Daniels did at NBC with Ricky Gervais’ seminal British comedy The Office.
Harrison complemented the German version of Ghosts, which is for public broadcaster WDR and streaming service ARD Mediathek, for following the initial recipe and then making new scripting choices.
“When you pick up a format, there is so much good stuff in it that you’d be crazy to get rid of,” he said. “The structure of the first two episodes leads you in incredibly well, as it’s incredibly clear – but there is no need to do it. You won’t have the big, bad BBC staring over your shoulder, and we all work very hard to be able to say, ‘It’s great, but you don’t have to do it.’
“I always look on it as a treat the moment where the writers, producers and broadcasters we’re working with make the leap and do something different. I cheer when it happens.”
Harrison also revealed that a Korean version of Ghosts had been developed. However, he said “the idea of a young couple trying to find a home together wasn’t actually reflective of young Koreans’ experience. What they wanted was three sisters as the central characters – one who could see the ghosts, one who never could and one is in the middle, so there are different perspectives.”
He added that the Korean “understanding of spirituality” was “completely different to the Western view,” which had made the adaptation process “fascinating.”
The Korean version, whose production team was not named, did not get picked up to series.
