A bold television event that was a daring as it was clever, though unfortunately will lose much of its impact at a second viewing. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have created a modern day "Ghostwatch" where their supposed live episode suffers technical issues and is forced off the air - only for behind the scenes views of the cast bemoaning the situation, altered clips from a previous episode, both real and fabricated news reports and some scenes from an old "Most Haunted" tell a story about vengeful ghosts haunting Granada Studios.
It's the commitment that needs to be most applauded. I'd love to know how many viewers they lost across the "sound errors" that took us back to the continuity announcer and then to air a couple of minutes of their first season episode before jumping back to the announcer and into the actual show. Though I'm sure that all but the most casual viewers of the show had their suspicions as the events unfurled it was lengthy enough that everyone watching must have considered that what they were seeing was genuine. From there it's quite a basic, though atmospheric ghost story. Similar to "The Haunting of Hill House" it's mostly based on paying attention to the backgrounds of the shots and seeing the ghosts looming, though a few are more blatant than in that show.
But as I say, for all its genius in premise, the actual second half of the show wasn't that scary, it was tense and still had a few laughs but I felt that (for once) perhaps less subtly would have been an improvement. It was also a little rushed - which again was the price paid for commitment to the subterfuge (I did wonder whether they might have even pencilled in a dummy show into the schedule afterwards and ran for another half an hour, but no). It also, won't ever work as well a second time. . not only because you're now aware of the deception but also because watching it on the I-player or Netflix won't buy into the illusion.
I'm going to stop now, because I'm getting too down on an episode of that was "must see" TV and that still is cycling around in my head hours after watching it. If you were there when it aired, I'd imagine it still is for you too.
It's the commitment that needs to be most applauded. I'd love to know how many viewers they lost across the "sound errors" that took us back to the continuity announcer and then to air a couple of minutes of their first season episode before jumping back to the announcer and into the actual show. Though I'm sure that all but the most casual viewers of the show had their suspicions as the events unfurled it was lengthy enough that everyone watching must have considered that what they were seeing was genuine. From there it's quite a basic, though atmospheric ghost story. Similar to "The Haunting of Hill House" it's mostly based on paying attention to the backgrounds of the shots and seeing the ghosts looming, though a few are more blatant than in that show.
But as I say, for all its genius in premise, the actual second half of the show wasn't that scary, it was tense and still had a few laughs but I felt that (for once) perhaps less subtly would have been an improvement. It was also a little rushed - which again was the price paid for commitment to the subterfuge (I did wonder whether they might have even pencilled in a dummy show into the schedule afterwards and ran for another half an hour, but no). It also, won't ever work as well a second time. . not only because you're now aware of the deception but also because watching it on the I-player or Netflix won't buy into the illusion.
I'm going to stop now, because I'm getting too down on an episode of that was "must see" TV and that still is cycling around in my head hours after watching it. If you were there when it aired, I'd imagine it still is for you too.
