YMMV / Ghosts (UK)

• Angst? What Angst?: At the end of series 2's second episode, Dante the dog bursts into flames in front of the fireplace. Despite being "like a child" to Lady Button and obviously upsetting her with the above, she's not even unusually huffy towards Allison by the next episode and indeed doesn't bring it up again.
• Arc Fatigue: Many viewers have grown tired with Thomas' infatuation with Alison, since she's made it clear for four seasons and counting that a) she's happily married and b) he's dead, so nothing is ever going to happen between them, and wish the team would simply let him accept it and move on already.
• Base-Breaking Character: Mike. Some say he's an "unfunny wet blanket who acts like a man child", while others say he's refreshing and express their admiration for Kiell Smith-Bynoe's ability to say so much with just a facial expression while having a much harder acting job than the rest of the cast (as he always has to act as if he can't see or hear the ghosts).
• Broken Base:
  • Series 4 seems to have caused a very minor one, as some have expressed that while they still enjoy the show, they feel it is simply running out of ideas for what to do with the ghosts; the hair, makeup and music changes were too jarring; and the humor came across as juvenile and stale. Mary's departure, while emotional, didn't do much to help matters.
  • The revelation in Season 5 of Kitty's death, and that her sister Eleanor regretted the way she had treated her and wept as she died. Some people were glad that Kitty didn't die unwanted and unloved, even if she wasn't aware of her sister's apology, while others felt that it was far too trite and contrived for Eleanor to be remorseful now, especially given how horribly (and implicitly racist) she had behaved towards Kitty for most of their lives; if the Button House Archives are to be considered canon, she even tried to drown her at one point.
  • The final episode. Some fans thought the ghosts letting Mike and Alison move out was an emotional way to round off the series and show how much the ghosts had grown, while others thought it was unnecessarily sad, undermined previous plotlines about why they stayed, and had too much focus on Betty at the expense of the ghosts.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Pat Butcher being accidentally hit through the neck with an arrow by one of his scouts? Tragic. The scout passing the bow to another boy, framing him for the accident? Funny. Pat stumbling to the coach, dying by inches, while the scouts watch in horror? Hilarious. And the show cranks it up a notch when it revisits Pat's death in "Perfect Day" and shows the other ghosts observing it, with Robin casually wagering the Captain 'Tenner says he stays.' (Word of God is that Pat as a character was literally born from his own death, since the team thought the scenario would be perfect Black Comedy.)
  • Alison ends up dreaming up the nightmare Mary shared with her, which is pure horror stuff and leads to Catapult Nightmare. Then it turns out all the ghosts had the exact same dream, reporting it across the house.
• Draco in Leather Pants: A very mild example, but the audiences love Pat and find him completely adorable despite Jim Howick, who plays Pat, describing him in interviews as "a bit of a prick".
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Captain has become rather popular on Tumblr, moreso than the other characters.
  • Lieutenant Havers only got several minutes of screentime, but he's proven to be quite popular amongst the fandom due to the tragic relationship between him and the Captain.
• Fan Nickname: For lack of a real first name (so far), the Captain is often called either "Ted" or, to make his friendship with Fanny that much more amusing, "Richard".^note Richard being a name that can be shortened to "Dick" If a nickname can be Jossed, this has been: the S5 finale revealed that the Captain's name is James.
• Genius Bonus: Robin regarding Christmas as a modern fad that won't last is obviously meant to be funny, but it's also true; the concept of Christmas as a major holiday isn't even two centuries old, as it first became really popular in the mid-nineteenth century (in England, it was actually on the way out before Charles Dickens revived it with A Christmas Carol).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Pat is killed by a stray arrow whilst teaching archery. A year later, Jim Howick would star in the sitcom Here We Go as Paul, a character who is into archery.
  • In-Universe, Alison plays Kitty’s sister Eleanor in most of the flashbacks in “Something to Share?” Later on in season 5’s “Pineapple Day”, it’s revealed that Alison is Eleanor’s descendant.
• Ho Yay:
  • The Captain and Pat seem to have a bit of Belligerent Sexual Tension, moreso than the other members of the cast, especially their tendency to Speak in Unison.
  • Robin and Julian get some moments as well. They often hang out together, laugh at each others' jokes/pranks and play chess together (with series 3 showing that it was Julian who taught Robin how to play). In series 3's The Woodworm Men they stick together throughout the episode, call for each other when they're running scared in the woods, and at the end of the episode Alison finds them huddled together in a little alcove, having fallen asleep on one another.
  • Kitty and Alison's relationship, but the majority of it is from Kitty's side. In an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Lolly Adefope says that she believes Kitty is a bit in love with Alison.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • Robin/Julian is "Chess Husbands", for their shared enjoyment of the game.
  • In addition to their Portmanteau Ship Name (listed below) Pat/The Captain are also known as Eggs & Soldier (the former of course for Pat's love of eggs, and the whole a reference to his meltdown about vegans not having eggs).
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The Captain and Thomas, but moreso the Captain.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Julian's line "It's not about the cheese, it's about the fun!" has taken off, now available for purchase as a notebook, mug, sticker or an art print!
  • Also, putting a "Gh" in front of other words - for example, pigeon would become "ghigeon". Even Laurence Rickard's gotten in on it!
  • "Moonah Ston" was full of them, from the Captain's "pom pom" line to Robin's calling the moon "Moonah".
  • Some fans have mentioned using Mary's "Get out, get out, get out" to, ah, encourage the departure of people they didn't like.
  • After Thomas was gifted an album from The Smiths to listen to in "It's Behind You", people started posting screenshots of said album and Thomas' reaction to it, with said album being edited to be something different.
• One-Scene Wonder: William, the rather boisterous Middle Ages ghost in "En Francais".
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • "PatCap" for Pat/The Captain.
  • Kitmas for Kitty/Thomas
• Special Effect Failure: In Season Four, the hair and makeup has gotten quite dodgy (probably due to COVID restrictions and the group's schedules not always lining up), as Julian's hair now looks like a very cheap wig (and the style is completely different), Mary's soot marks change between some scenes, Fanny and Kitty have noticeably different hairstyles and they've even dyed the Captain's moustache a darker shade. Justified in Mathew Baynton's case, as he was starting to go grey and needed to cover it up. In a non-physical effect, Kitty acts much less childish and her voice in general is less high-pitched, which threw some fans at first.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many fans want Alison to go to Barclay's house and talk to the ghosts that haunt there so they can gather dirt on him,(with many wanting the ghosts to be played by the other cast members of Horrible Histories such as Sarah Hadland and Dominique Moore) though sadly the show never uses this. What makes this particularly egregious is that Samantha in the American version did just that.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Nobody saw the ghosts in Barclay's field until series 4? Even though Robin goes out adventuring and Alison sees every other ghost? (Although Robin seems to know them already, and Alison spends as little time around Barclay as possible.)
• The Woobie: As each ghost gets their time in the spotlight, their woobie status increases. To wit:
  • Fanny was murdered by her husband and has to constantly relive her murder each night. The 2021 Christmas special also reveals that she only married him due to her family being in dire financial trouble, and that she could have been a brilliant mathematician under better circumstances.
  • Pat died in a tragic and stupid accident, was unable to watch his son grow up, and then realised his wife was cheating on him back when he was alive - and that he essentially drove her to it due to his obsessive need for planning and structure, meaning there was never any spontaneity or excitement in their marriage.
  • Robin has been around for many thousands of years, totally alone for long stretches of that time, with the moon for his only constant companion, and is frustrated by his trouble at communicating with the others. He's had to see so many of his friends, living and dead, 'move on' and constantly be left behind that he simply can't let himself feel the pain of mourning and missing them any longer, otherwise it would destroy him. The Button House Archives revealed that he's also gone mad at least three times.
  • The Captain, who is heavily closeted, has had his heart broken at least once thanks to the repressive time he lived in.
  • Thomas was tricked by his cousin into fighting a duel and died alone believing his beloved didn't love him in return, and said cousin married said beloved.
  • Mary is still heavily affected by the trauma of her trial and death, and it takes over 300 years for her to even begin to want to talk about it.
  • Kitty was clearly very lonely when she was alive, since her only close companions were a malicious sister who enjoyed tricking her, and a garden statue.
  • Julian's moment comes in the 2020 Christmas special; he hates Christmas because he subconsciously feels guilty about missing not just every single Christmas of the first four years of his daughter's life but most of her life in general, and how he died before he could learn to be a better father to her.
  • Humphrey had an arranged marriage with Sophie in which they were both fairly unhappy, despite his efforts to make it work, since they never learned to communicate both linguistically and emotionally; Humphrey ends up being hit with the revelation that Sophie's been plotting treason against Queen Elizabeth, sacrifices himself to give her a chance to escape and gets beheaded in a freak accident, all in the space of a few minutes. He then spends the next four hundred plus years as a decapitated head, frequently ignored, unintentionally excluded and constantly left in inconvenient places. He's also gone down in history as a traitor, albeit he wasn't aware of that until very recently.
  • The poor hitchhiker in Bump in the Night; she's forced to haunt the side of the road where she was murdered, all alone, with no one to talk to. The same can be said for the Nanny ghost in Gorilla War, stuck in a car park with a dead infant for company. (Though that last bit is implied, it's also possible the baby moved on but the nanny did not, leaving her all alone). Really, pretty much any ghost who died in an isolated spot counts; in series 1 there are a pair of Luftwaffe pilots who have been stuck in mid air since their bomber crashed in World War 2 and in series 3 there's a Roundhead soldier who's been standing in what must once have been a field but is now a path since the English Civil War. Like the hitchhiker they all get very excited when they realise that Alison can see and hear them, and saddened when she refuses to stick around.

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