{"id":24844,"date":"2022-10-31T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1729775"},"modified":"2022-10-31T10:05:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T09:05:27","slug":"ghostwatch-is-30-it-got-a-reputation-as-something-subversive","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/ghostwatch-is-30-it-got-a-reputation-as-something-subversive\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghostwatch is 30: \u201cIt got a reputation as something subversive\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By David Barnett\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 31 October 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

At 9:25pm on Saturday 31st October, 1992, BBC One broadcast a piece of drama as part of their Halloween offering.<\/p>\n

The 90-minute show was never presented as anything else. The Radio Times<\/strong> listing stated quite clearly it was a \u201cScreen One Special drama for Halloween\u201d naming writer Stephen Volk, producer Ruth Baumgarten and director Lesley Manning, and the guide said the show was \u201cstarring\u201d \u2014 as dramas did, as opposed to factual programmes, which generally \u201cfeatured\u201d people \u2014 Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, and Craig Charles.<\/p>\n

\u201cGhosts no longer inhabit stately homes and rattle chains. They live in ordinary council houses like that of Mrs Pamela Early,\u201d said the listing. \u201cFor months she\u2019s suffered strange noises, awful smells and bent cutlery, but is hers really the most haunted house in Britain?<\/p>\n

\u201cBBCtv turns the cameras on ghoulies, ghosties and things that go bump in the night.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was Ghostwatch<\/a>. Quite clearly, fiction. A drama. Not in any way, shape or form, real.<\/p>\n

However, not all of the 11 million people who tuned in to watch it that Halloween night got the memo, it seems. The cast, crew and creatives gathered together to watch it together at a wrap party\/live watch at a sailing club in Chiswick. All except producer Ruth Baumgarten, who had stayed at Broadcasting House while the show was on air.<\/p>\n

When she turned up after Ghostwatch had aired, writer Stephen Volk remembers her looking a little ashen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve jammed the BBC switchboard,\u201d she said to him, aghast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember laughing,\u201d Volk tells RadioTimes.com<\/a>. \u201cBut Ruth wasn\u2019t. She said to me, \u2018I\u2019m serious, the switchboard is jammed. With complaints\u2019.\u201d<\/p>

Ghostwatch was structured like a live broadcast, with TV stalwart Michael Parkinson acting as anchor in the BBC studios, while Craig Charles played the part of roving reporter out on Foxhill Drive, in Northolt, north-west London. Sarah Greene was out on the scene, too, while her real-life husband Mike Smith backed up Parky in the studios.<\/p>\n

It was the sort of One Show format that\u2019s very familiar today, but was perhaps less so 30 years ago, save for special events or charity fundraising nights. There would be discussions in the studio, phone-ins, and then cutting to the outside broadcast. Things would go slightly wrong, or there would be interruptions, like a kid cycling past the live broadcast from the street. It looked exactly like what it purported to be.<\/p>\n

Around half-way through, things started to take a more sinister turn than the jolly Halloween japes that had led up to that point. Attention was focused on one house, lived in by a mother and her two young daughters. And the malevolent entity the children had nicknamed Pipes, because their mum had tried to explain away the mysterious noises in the house as the rattling of the central heating.<\/p>\n

When the full on haunting began, it was terrifying. And the fiction of this being a live broadcast was maintained throughout, as the horror mounted and the viewers at home realised they didn\u2019t quite know what they were watching\u2026 and whether it was real or not.<\/p>\n

One of screenwriter Volk\u2019s favourite moments was when the outside broadcast cameras showed a figure clearly standing by the curtains. In the studio, Parkinson peers at the monitor, and maintains he can\u2019t see anything. But everyone at home had.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith things like this, the audience really wants something to happen,\u201d says Volk. \u201cAnd it never does. But in Ghostwatch, it did.\u201d<\/p>\n