Ghostwatch (DVD)

It took the artistic genius of Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton and the Mercury Theatre to send America into a mass media-triggered panic. In Britain, we got by on an ex-Blue Peter presenter and her blandly smug husband, an infuriating professional Scouser...and Parky. How did THAT happen? ** 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' ** Well, back in the America of 1938, the hysteria surrounding Orson Welles and his radio production of H.G.Wells' 'The War Of The Worlds' can be put down to a nation scarred and easily scared, trying to claw its way out of the Great Depression, and the kind of place where families would gather round the ...  Read the complete review

Ghostwatch was a 90-minute drama broadcast by the BBC on Halloween in 1992. It was enormously controversial, to the extent that it’s never been repeated, and seems to have been airbrushed out of BBC history. It’s one of the best dramas they’ve ever made; luckily, the British Film Institute has issued it on DVD. In the 70s, the BBC had a tradition of making ghost stories for Christmas, usually adaptations of MR James. Generally featuring respected character actors (Michael Horden, Peter Vaughan, Denholm Elliot) being menaced by spooks, they’re still surprisingly effective, in spite of their dated production values. These dramas understood the value of not ...  Read the complete review

Broadcast once on BBC1 on Halloween Night 1992 and never repeated since, Lesley Manning and Stephen Volk's astonishing Ghostwatch finally re-surfaced on a BFI-produced DVD a couple years back, to the ecstatic hollering and cheering of a legion of fans, yours truly included. A spoof Crimewatch-style affair split between TV studio and "live" on-location reportage, Ghostwatch was a true "event" of a sort unthinkable in today's several-hundred-station, press-the-red-button Tellyverse. It gained a notoriety, stirred controversy in a way unmatched by anything that hasn't come from the fever-addled mind of Chris Morris. Viewers accepted ...  Read the complete review

If you know this isn't real it's still scary. Actual well known presenters with what seem like real people in a real scary situation - An active poltergeist centered around 2 young girls and a lone mum trying to cope with a nerve jangling time. In the studio we have friendly Micheal Parkinson aka Parky with the Chief Paranormalist Lady Doctor. On Phones is Mike Smith. Out in the field we have Craig Charles to provide a few light moments and inside the house is children's TV Favourite Sarah Green, real life wife of Mike Smith. We have a dynamic with Parky as the voice of reason, Mike Smith fearing for the safety of his Ghostbusting wife, Sarah in ...  Read the complete review

Having watched this the first time around when it was shown on BBC one i just had to buy the DVD and relieve the chills i got. To put it simply, this is a documentary type program supposedly following an entity known only as pipes who has been attacking a family, more specifically the oldest child. When this was first shown on Television, millions of viewers believed this to be real and that alone caused a mass panic attack forcing the BBC to apologise to its viewers. If however you already know that this is a hoax there is no problem at all and you can let yourself be spooked in the happy knowledge that it isnt real. great for any girly night in or when you feel like ...  Read the complete review