For fans of BBC sitcom Ghosts, it’s been three long years since Season 5 concluded on a bittersweet note that still hangs in the air. It’s a pleasure, then, to be back in the spirited company of disgraced Tory MP Julian (Simon Farnaby), Edwardian matriarch Fanny (Martha Howe-Douglas), World War II captain, er, Captain (Ben Willbond), youth-group leader Pat (Jim Howick), caveman Robin (Laurence Rickard), failed Georgian poet Thomas (Mathew Baynton) and naive Georgian noblewoman Kitty (Lolly Adefope).
Forever bickering and bonding, they’re resigned to haunting ramshackle manor Button House, having died there over the centuries; and all have been bored silly since the last owners, Alison and Mike (Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe), upped sticks at the end of the TV show.
Alison and Mike sold Button House so that it might be turned into a hotel and golf resort, but 112 days on, nothing’s happened. “Can’t get the tradesmen,” huffs Julian, who opens the movie by spelling out “LEAVE” on a Ouija board when some local kids break in to hold a séance. They scarper before he can add “EUROPE”.
It’s no surprise that The Possession Of Button House offers non-stop chuckles.
The team behind Ghosts, sitcom and movie, are Them There, the comedy troupe that created Horrible Histories. It’s therefore no surprise that The Possession Of Button House offers non-stop chuckles. It’s neatly plotted, too, introducing a band of eco protestors, a corrupt MP and the aforementioned group of kids, led by anguished foster child Jack (I Swear’s Scott Ellis Watson). Each party has a role to play in the titular abode’s fate. As do Alison and Mike, who the Ghosts track down.
So, why exist as a movie? Well, apart from the formal language being a tad more cinematic (crane shots!), it comes down to Them There conjuring up a standalone story by having our fab phantoms learn that they can possess the kids and hence do something entirely new — leave Button House. This gives fans such unexpected, thrilling sights as Pat leading an urban-set car chase, Thomas being Tasered at a police station and Julian, who’s been without trousers since dying in a 1993 sex scandal, wearing jeans.
Also fresh is the mix of genres, with Ghosts’ mild scares and domestic-sitcom giggles now spliced with antics borrowed from body-swap, coming-of-age, culture-clash, political-conspiracy and action movies. In a film that nonetheless feels familiar and comforting, it’s a surprising medley. As the Captain would undoubtedly say: bally hell!