Spooky Things (Most Haunted)

Member Name: Hunting_Bears

Product:	Most Haunted
Date:	10/10/03 (1641 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great fun

Disadvantages: Richard Felix

I am not a big fan of the television set or 'The Idiot Box' as comedian Peter Kay calls it, however I do occasionally watch it if I scour the endless upon endless channels and search (usually in vain) for something to view that is worth while.

Living TV is a woman's channel no two ways about it but there is a highly addictive show on there starring ex-Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding and a Scouse medium named Derek Acorah. I fell upon this show by mistake on night whilst I was channel surfing and I must admit the programme 'Most Haunted' is not only very intriguing but also highly entertaining.

The 'Most Haunted' team consists of Yvette (the presenter and producer) who on occasion gets totally shit scared (to the audience's delight). Derek Acorah is a strange concoction of gay hairdresser and a genuinely talented medium who along with his dead mate Sam tries and gets in contact with ghosts in various locations around Great Britain. To add a little scientific weight to the show Phil Whyman is the 'so-called' scientist who conducts experiments such as baseline readings to see how 'active' a supposedly haunted site is. The three main presenters are excellent in wonderfully cheesy way but the show is let down by the earnest Historian Richard Felix, who believes that everything he says is of major significance and hard to explain. Just watch the way he emphasises every word with hand gestures, ("Richard what you say really isn't that complicated mate!")

The show is split into three distinct parts, introduction, investigation and analysis. The first part gives contextual information and is part-history lesson and part ghost story. The crew then walks around with Derek as he talks to himself and sometimes the dead. What may seem laughable at first is actually silenced when Derek with great accuracy reveals information that he could not possibly know about. Yvette assu
res the audience that Derek never knows where he going to until the day of filming. And if he was cheating then why make the programme? I am not easily convinced of spooky things but I know least entertain the notion thanks to this great television show.

The second part is the actual investigation which plays like 'The Blair Witch Project', the crew amble around in pitch black scaring themselves, usually Yvette is left alone in the dark and screams her catch-phrase "Fucking hell!" This part of the show is about the collection of evidence and her lies the crux of the show because sometimes it can be deathly dull and other times very exciting. Standout episodes include 'Brannigans in Manchester' when Derek was possessed and 'Halloween at the Haunted Mansion in Gloucester' when Yvette felt she was grabbed on the shoulder. If there is a major weakness with the show it is that the experiments are not very well controlled and sometimes nothing can happen at all. But another side to this programme is the anticipation of events and when something remotely spooky happens the audience is hooked.

Over three series the show has developed a huge following and I am such a huge fan that I even rang in when they offered tickets to the live Halloween specials. Television is over run these days with totally banal, derivative rubbish and I am just glad that there is actually something worth my time on television. It may come across has a load of cheesy nonsense and to a certain extent it is but it is also about looking into the unknown and there remains a certain curiosity within people to at least say 'well maybe there's something in this'.

'Most Haunted' is on every Tuesday at nine o'clock and every now and again there are live specials that are great fun. Give it a go cause it is a cult hit already and I think it could mainstream. Pleasant nightmares.

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