Deadline: BBC Comedy ‘Ghosts’ To End After Five Seasons

Story from Deadline:

Hit BBC comedy Ghosts is to end after the upcoming fifth season, bringing to a close one of the BBC’s most successful family comedies of the past generation.

The Monumental Television team behind the show announced on social media that “after five incredible years haunting the halls of Button House, we have decided that the time is right to let our beloved sitcom Ghosts rest in peace.”

“We could never have imagined the reception the show has enjoyed, or the fun we have had making it, and we would like to thank our amazing cast and crew as well as everyone at BBC Comedy, BBC1 and Monumental Television for their tireless support,” they added.

Following a young couple who inherit an old mansion which they don’t realize is full of ghosts, each of whom has a story, Ghosts has been an outsized hit, regularly amassing 4M to 5M viewers consolidated per week. The show stars writers and creators Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond, with Lolly Adefope, Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe.

In the fifth and final season, Alison (Ritchie) and Mike (Smith-Bynoe) begin exploring other means of making ends meet and contemplate a new chapter that could have a huge effect on the Ghosts’ (after) lives.

The show has been remade into a successful U.S. comedy on CBS, running for two seasons so far. It is the first to have been revealed to be ending after the BBC announced it will be cutting 1,000 hours of shows per year as it battles to make hundreds of millions of pounds of savings.

Ghosts (6 x 30’) is a Monumental Television production in association with Them There for the BBC and was commissioned by Jon Petrie, Director of BBC Comedy Commissioning. The producer is Pat Tookey-Dickson, the director is Simon Hynd, and the creators (also creators and stars of Yonderland and Bill, and the original stars of Horrible Histories) serve as Executive Producers alongside Monumental’s Alison Carpenter, Debra Hayward and Alison Owen. Ghosts is distributed by BBC Studios and the Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Seb Barwell.