User Reviews

With the Christmas TV schedule looking like a bit of a wasteland one potential bright spot was another episode of "Ghosts" the second season of which finished a few months earlier. I felt the second season showed improvement over the first, and this episode fits into that improvement nicely.

With Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) wanting to show his family that he is capable of creating a magical Christmas, his frustration grows as they insist on helping. The new people in the house mean that the ghosts have to share, which particularly aggrieves Julian (Simon Farnaby) who shares with Mike's sister and her new-born, and often crying, baby. Eventually though he comes to consider his own daughter, the time he lost with her and what she might be doing now.

It was noticeable that in that second season, several of the characters got feature episodes that showed their backstory but Farnaby's slimy Conservative MP did not. Seems that he was being held back for this story, which ties in the frustrations of families at Christmas time with the idea that they are the only truly important thing.

It was again, amusing if gentle comedy, hitting the warmth of the season well.

This episode gave us sort of a Christmas Carol-like story without copying the structure or phoning it in. It focuses on Julian, who gets a kind of Scrooge-like development, but it's the ghost that's changed by the living, in this case a human baby he's unceremoniously left with, who seems to like him for some reason. How the baby can see him or know he's there is questionable. Maybe it's a witch like Mary accused Alison of being. Julian is still the same awful person he's always been, but we get to see an alarming vulnerable side to him.

What a Christmas treat this was, quite literally the one good show on at Christmas 2020, I say good, I actually meant brilliant.

It finally focuses on Julian, he's such a big character, but we've never been given much of his backstory, he's normally just the mean M.P. here we learn about what makes him tick, and why he is what he is.

I teared up, I laughed, I genuinely absolutely loved every second of it, it somehow managed to truly capture what the true meaning of Christmas actually is.

An Officer and a Gentleman should not be privy to The Queen's curtains. I spat my Bailey's out, I laughed so much.

Glorious telly, 10/10.

No spoilers here! No need to do a pointless blow by blow review because I know you'll enjoy. Merry Christmas to the hugely talented cast and crew!! Xx

This really hit home for me on a personal level. I never thought the sleazy politician would be the character I'd relate to most. I love when characters aren't 2D in shows like this. America should take notes.

Blow me. The Ghosts Christmas Special starts off with a rude sausage joke.

Mike wants the perfect Christmas where he cooks for his family but starts to get annoyed when his mother begins to take over in the kitchen.

Alison would like everyone to sing a carol but no one else seems to be that interested.

As for Julian. He used to claim that Christmas was for family, family and family before he headed off in the direction of a strip club. A crying baby makes him realise just what he missed out on.

The flashbacks showed that this was an episode all about Julian. Thankfully for him, his grown up daughter did not become a drug addict or an alternative comedian.

Charlotte Ritchie used to be in an all girl band and gets to show off her singing voice as the ghosts sing around the piano with Alison. A lamentful carol, obviously as the sole inheritor it implies she has no other close family.