Ghostwatch Live (1992)

[petril]

The inclusion of Craig Charles is pretty neat, since he'd not long started doing presenting gigs. I think he'd not been long doing What's That Noise on CBBC. Unlike the other seasoned pros who pretty much have to play it straight and neutral, he's the rookie so it's easier to take him pissing about without disrupting the tone. He's basically the resident comedy character on a Saturday Morning show, so he can turn up, but more importantly be shunted off for the serious important bits

[Cuellar]

Can't check myself as I haven't seen it to know if not, but is this the actual broadcast here on YouTube in full or a documentary about it or something?

The full thing is here https://archive.org/details/Ghostwatch

I don't know if there's a higher quality version knocking about (apart from the Blu Ray), but it's quite hard to spot the ghost at all which somewhat reduces the spookiness.

[non capisco]

The bit where it's pointed out that the cameraman looks like Adrian Edmondson is a great piece of verisimilitude, feels like there was always shite like that going on in genuine BBC outside broadcasts.

Sorry, just trying to build my case here against all you hard knocks.

[beanheadmcginty]

It was very entertaining trying to explain the context of all the various presenters to my clueless millennial European friends in order to set the scene. Bearing in mind it involves Muhammad Ali, Billy Connolly, a university rugby club pool table orgy, a helicopter crash, smoking crack in a limousine, free Parker pens, a pissed off Helen Mirren and Meg Ryan, the band 5 Star and the basic concept of Rod Hull and Emu.

[neveragain]

The bit where it's pointed out that the cameraman looks like Adrian Edmondson is a great piece of verisimilitude, feels like there was always shite like that going on in genuine BBC outside broadcasts.

The DVD I've got features the script as a PDF, and I remember there was another comic's name in that part. It would be slightly more interesting if I could remember who but still... backstage knowledge there.

[non capisco]

The fact he says "Right on!" which should obviously be a Rik line actually adds to it, I think.

[McDead]

The inclusion of Craig Charles is pretty neat, since he'd not long started doing presenting gigs. I think he'd not been long doing What's That Noise on CBBC. Unlike the other seasoned pros who pretty much have to play it straight and neutral, he's the rookie so it's easier to take him pissing about without disrupting the tone. He's basically the resident comedy character on a Saturday Morning show, so he can turn up, but more importantly be shunted off for the serious important bits

Also at this point Charles has become a pretty decent actor, so he's well placed to suddenly switch over to "abject fear" mode in a way that, say, Parky isn't.

I don't really remember what happens to CC as the story goes on (and I won't be watching to find out, I'm still a wuss in that department). Doesn't Pipes trap him somewhere? Maybe even kill him?

[McDead]

Stephen Volk did a short story as a sort of sequel.

A copy of it is here-

https://www.scribd.com/document/308537824/Stephen-Volk-31-10-Copy

Mr Pipes also turns up in Sam Hogan's decent alt history novel England's Screaming, popping up in the audience of shows like Going Live and the like as a sort of televisual ghost. His final fate in the book is grim, but fitting.

[beanheadmcginty]

Sarah Greene says the cameraman looks like Mike Gatting and he looks fuck all like Mike Gatting. He's got a beard and that's it. Although I think 1992 could well have been the point in time when the UK had its fewest beards, so she didn't have many to choose from.
I concur that Craigy C is easily the most convincing performer in all of this.
Do we think the film Speed ripped off the idea of using old CCTV to cover up what was happening from this?

[non capisco]

Sarah Greene says the cameraman looks like Mike Gatting and he looks fuck all like Mike Gatting. He's got a beard and that's it.

But it is exactly the kind of shite she would have said if it was a genuine OB and she was desperately riffing to fill time.

[McDead]

But it is exactly the kind of shite she would have said if it was a genuine OB and she was desperately riffing to fill time.

Exactly. The quasi flubs make it all the more convincing.

The only consolidation in the dark week or so after this aired was that the actress playing Dr Pascoe turned up in an ad for Calgon, and was therefore probably not dead.

[beanheadmcginty]

But it is exactly the kind of shite she would have said if it was a genuine OB and she was desperately riffing to fill time.

Imagine if she said he looks like Kenneth Branagh from the year 2007 (which he does). Would we all still be shitting ourselves and checking our glory holes for Mr Pipes?

Actually, that's just reminded me, I know "glory hole" is a legit term that mums used to refer to the cupboard under the stairs, but surely in 1992 a BBC TV crew knew why this was funny?

[IsavedLatin]

I'm feeling incredibly sorry for myself that I missed out on the event that @flotemysost attended where the writer was interviewed; ever since I first saw Ghostwatch (in adulthood maybe 5 years ago) I've thought it a masterpiece and wanted to learn more about where the creator came from and his other works, but I was able to discover very little online. (On which note, thanks for all the podcast etc. links in this thread, I'll be following those up with gusto!)

Though sorry to miss the interview, I'm not sorry to have missed the laughter at the screening, given how highly I esteem it. I obviously knew this was a fiction from the off, given I was watching it maybe 25 years after first transmission, and some of the nuances of its specifics were lost on me (had to have the semiotics of Sarah Greene's casting explained to me, for instance) but it completely and utterly shat me up. The care taken over the production, the sophistication of its toying with the format, the remorselessly, utterly mundane setting: I am definitely in Team One of the Best Things Evur.

[bomb_dog]

I went to a Ghostwatch screening about 23 years ago when Volk did a short interview, and I've got a feeling this is a bit of a side gig for him every year since then. Don't be upset you missed it, I expect he'll be around doing it again soon.

[McDead]

I suppose all the Pipeheads in the thread already know that Stephen Volk wanted to have dog whistles blow at certain points during the broadcast to get viewers' pets to start acting up? The BBC considered this a step too far and vetoed the idea.

[neveragain]

A sound on frequencies only dogs could hear, I believe, which is delightfully devilish (Seymour).

[dr beat]

*Had* to watch it tonight.

[beanheadmcginty]

Has anybody ever suggested the idea that Mr Pipes is an evil paedophile doing whatever he wants on Saturday night prime time BBC1 might conceivably be a representation of somebody else?

[Captain Z]

Dog whistles blowing in the street where they were filming, or blowing on the TV broadcast? I suspect the latter wouldn't have worked because TV speakers (or any speakers) don't reproduce frequencies above the threshold of human hearing.

[McDead]

Dog whistles blowing in the street where they were filming, or blowing on the TV broadcast? I suspect the latter wouldn't have worked because TV speakers (or any speakers) don't reproduce frequencies above the threshold of human hearing.

A sound on frequencies only dogs could hear, as neveragain says. Certainly that was the plan, though as I say nowt came of it.

[Catalogue Trousers]

huh huh they said glory hole huh huh

[Registering to lurk]

I was at university in 1992 and I'd got Ghostwatch flagged as something to see. I knew it was a drama before it aired so the publicity seeped through -I might have seen it mentioned somewhere like TV Zone.

In the end, I was running late and I got back just in time for the end where everything goes crazy in the studio. Those sequences still had a feeling of power because you rarely saw shots of the camera and sound crew, even in live broadcasts, because television, and the BBC in particular, had a base level of professionalism which didn't want the viewer to see the mechanics of making a programme. If you did see someone from the studio crew it meant that something unplanned was happening. It sounds kind of dumb, but my go to example of this is an episode of Treasure Hunt where the cameraman had to run up a flight of stairs towards a mirror. You got a good view of the cameraman, who waved as he ran past. It sits in my memory because this sort of event was really rare. Anyway, it gave the end of Ghostwatch an apocalyptic feel because at a kind of subconscious level I knew television programmes shouldn't look like this.

It was almost another ten years before I was able to get hold of a copy of Ghostwatch on VHS, and when I finally saw the whole programme it didn't disappoint. I'd have been offended by the laughter at the screening, but its part of communal viewings. I remember going to see the rerelease of The Exorcist, and being confused because people were laughing at stuff which absolutely shat me up the first time I saw the film -but in the intervening years it had been parodied to death.

[sevendaughters]

sometimes I think laughter reveals people on the precipice of a different emotion, navigating something new, idk, maybe it did look hokey but there is something quite small and profound at the heart of Ghostwatch

[McDead]

sometimes I think laughter reveals people on the precipice of a different emotion, navigating something new, idk, maybe it did look hokey but there is something quite small and profound at the heart of Ghostwatch

Well put.

[Cuellar]

Actually you're all wrong.

The guy DOES look like Mike Gatting.

[flotemysost]

I feel bad for laughing now! I'm sort of fascinated by the conventions and stylings of these things, and I quite often crack up at especially overwrought real-life news pieces on TV or the radio, absurd wording or dramatic delivery (probably not helped by my love of comedy that lampoons this stuff) - so I think paired with the crowd mentality of a social setting, I was probably feeling primed to look for lolz rather than chills.

But that's not to undermine the staggering attention to detail and uncanny authenticity of the whole thing - it's really impressive and effective. As someone mentioned in the Q+A after the screening, this was before things like Blair Witch Project and that subgenre of "fly on the wall" type horror; it's possibly easy to underestimate how unnerving it must have been at the time. And yeah, those silly little asides and ad-libs help build up a false sense of comforting familiarity, which does make it all the more eerie when that gets torn down.

And yeah good point sevendaughters re: laughter and emotion, I think you're absolutely right on that too.

I remember going to see the rerelease of The Exorcist, and being confused because people were laughing at stuff which absolutely shat me up the first time I saw the film -but in the intervening years it had been parodied to death.

I saw The Omen for the first time in the cinema last year, and I involuntarily snorted with laughter when

Spoiler alert

that bloke gets decapitated on a building site

[close]

but I'd probably be SHITTING BRIX if I was watching at home on my own.

[sevendaughters]

no, no, I think laughing is valid, sometimes it is dismissive and sometimes it is the sound of someone figuring it out or appreciating it differently, idk, it's complex!

i really like the format of presenting a drama as a straight version of the thing it is based on. for that reason I have always been a fan of the 1994 US made-for-TV film Without Warning and its take on alien invasion done as a network news broadcast. Main guy is a news anchor and carries the film with real gravitas. I guess you will see through it as the mum from Malcolm in the Middle and John de Lancie show up as actors, but it works for me.

[Alberon]

I've heard of that one, but not seen it. There was another one from around the same time about a terrorist group with a nuclear device that was done the same way.

Eventually the terrorists are defeated and you watch the experts defusing the bomb on a split screen with a reporter about a hundred yards away. Then you see the experts starting to panic and run and the bomb goes off.

[ElTwopo]

Re: Mike Gatting. He actually appeared on Noel's House Party earlier that same evening doing 'Grab a Grand'.

(No, I'm not Busby in disguise. I was browsing BBC Genome earlier to see what else was on that night as 15yo me completely missed this when it was broadcast).

The early nineties was total 'Gattingmania'

[dr beat]

But that's not to undermine the staggering attention to detail and uncanny authenticity of the whole thing - it's really impressive and effective. As someone mentioned in the Q+A after the screening, this was before things like Blair Witch Project and that subgenre of "fly on the wall" type horror; it's possibly easy to underestimate how unnerving it must have been at the time. And yeah, those silly little asides and ad-libs help build up a false sense of comforting familiarity, which does make it all the more eerie when that gets torn down.

Sarah Greene was inspired casting.  Someone who by that point had built a reputation as a calm and steady hand presenting live kids tv and all the challenges that entails, as well as having acting chops.

I think having her in the house, and her calm authority, gave people a subliminal feeling of 'oh its Sarah Greene, this will be fine', which only serves to heighten the impact when it doesn't.

Edit: I think its massively influential on Blair Witch and all that stuff.