For the last five years, January has meant one thing to the cast of Ghosts: trundling over to West Horsley Place in Surrey to film the next series. Not in 2024. The BBC comedy’s final episode is set to air this Christmas, and after that, what do this in-demand lot have planned?
Plenty, it turns out. They’ll be popping up on screen and stage, as well as writing new projects both individually and together. As Larry Rickard told Den of Geek, “It’s not like we’re [famously fractious 70s soft rock band] The Eagles and we hate each other!” A Ghosts reunion down the line “wouldn’t be a mountain to climb,” says Rickard. “It’s a door that’s shut but obviously, doors have hinges and handles.”
And ghosts can just walk through them, we venture? “Well exactly, they haven’t even got to go to the effort of opening them.”
“We were quite definite, and this will probably become clearer in the fullness of time. We weren’t bluffing when we were going that’s us drawing a line under it, but if in the future everyone decides there might be some more, another way of doing it and someone, somewhere is willing to pay for that, we might find a way, but it will depend on whether everyone’s willing and able. Who can say, but for now we’re happy chasing down some other things.”
Mathew Baynton
Between January and March 2024, when Ghosts will usually be filming, Mat Baynton will be making his Royal Shakespeare Company debut in the role of Bottom in the RSC’s new production of fairy-based comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford- Upon-Avon. He’ll soon be seen in cinemas as Fickelgruber in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka (co-written by Simon Farnaby), as well as on TV playing Dr Thomas (no relation) in the BBC’s next Agatha Christie mystery Murder is Easy, and Elliot Ward in the upcoming BBC Three thriller A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
Simon Farnaby
Children’s author, screenwriter and actor Simon Farnaby will soon be seen, along with several of his Ghosts castmates, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel film Wonka, which he co-wrote with director Paul King. Next November, the third Paddington film will be out, based on a story by Farnaby. (We’d love to hear good news about the film adaptation he wrote for Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, for Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris’s Neal Street Productions with StudioCanal.)
Martha Howe-Douglas
Excitingly, Larry Rickard confirmed to Den of Geek that he and Martha Howe-Douglas are currently writing an unnamed project together, but that’s all we know about that one at this stage.
Jim Howick
In September 2023, production begins on the second series of Tom Basden’s sitcom Here We Go, in which Howick plays Paul Jessop, a former (yes, Pat fans) archery champion. Howick stars opposite Katherine Parkinson and Alison Steadman in the Jessop family BBC comedy. A third series was commissioned at the same time as the first, so there’s plenty more of the Jessops on the way. Whether or not Bridget Christie’s excellently strange comedy series The Change, in which Howick plays local community DJ and culture wars soldier ‘The Verderer’, will get a second series remains to be seen, but Channel 4 has ordered three new scripts from Christie, so fingers crossed.
Ben Willbond
According to his website Ben Willbond has several features in development, and Larry Rickard confirmed in October 2023 that the two of them are currently writing something together, but that’s all under wraps for now. When he’s not involved in derring-do charity challenges, Willbond is sticking to his CBBC roots with a second series of children’s drama A Kind of Spark. It’s the story of a child with autism who wants to honor the women who tried as witches in their village, and Willbond plays 16th century witch hunter Adam Quinn.
