2 out of 5
Directed by: Christiaan Van Vuuren, Madeleine Dyer
The Ghosts “formula” – a young couple moves into a house haunted by locals who’ve passed there across the decades – is admittedly a nicely flexible concept to expand to other regions beyond its roots in the UK, but in this third outing, the extension may also have diminishing returns.
As suggested, the setup remains much the same: Kate (Tamala Shelton) and Sean (Rowan Witt) have their affordable apartment-hunting woes solved when Kate learns that she’s inherited a country estate, which is initially seen as a “sell it for parts” opportunity, but turns into a plan to stay there and run it as a hotel. …Also, after an accident, Kate discovers she has the ability to see ghosts, and we learn that ghosts are rooted to where they’ve died, making the living situation one where Kate is staying with generations back of her relatives, or people who met their fate on the property. Going from the British edition to the US showed how local history humorously affects this selection of spirits, and the Aussie take does much the same, but… does it? Some of the character archetypes in the first two versions were somewhat cleverly swapped around to keep the same overall makeup but make it make sense for the region; in the Aussie Ghosts, while it may be fitting for the country, the characters are rather a hodgepodge of all over to the extent that they feel incredibly broad – an 80s exercise girl (Michelle Brasier); a biker (Jackson Tozer) – and, at least to this US viewer, feel like they lack any distinction which makes this version of the show seem localized at all. Character quirks which “made sense” before, like one ghost’s (George Zhao) continual pants-lessness, or one ghost’s (Brent Hill) visual impalement, come across as being there only because they’re there in the UK and US. This carries over to the show half-heartedly giving the ghosts each their own powers, and defining what happens when people walk through them, two staples from the series that Aussie Ghosts almost forgets to include, then does, then doesn’t much care about their inclusion.
The actors are completely lost when the show has zero identity. Without intention of disparaging their skills, Tozer and Ines English’s character (a rich socialite) are stuck doing rather grating voices and impressions aimlessly, with Brent Hill’s soldier character and Mandy McElhinney’s drunken cleaning woman at least given some latitude to be more over-the-top silly. Zhao’s character, a buffoon, is the funniest since he gets to be the relative straight man amidst a bunch of shot-in-the-dark jokes, and Brasier has the most depth written into her part, making her pretty charming when on screen. But then we have our couple, played by Shelton and Witt, who are so gratingly arbitrary and inconsistent (they are idiots most of the time; seem concerned about goingons some of the time; etc.) that, again, it undermines what the actors could probably otherwise bring to the roles.
Oddly, given that I’m criticizing the lack of depth and specificity, the show achieves the same harmless entertainment vibes of the US version when it’s not trying to build out ghost backstory – there are a couple of episodes where you can sense that the show could work if the writers were a bit more bold with not being beholden to the series’ tropes. Outside of those couple episodes, though, the series just barely keeps its head above water, managing an occasional chuckle to counter its poorer qualities.
