{"id":9026,"date":"2021-12-21T18:10:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T17:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=890708"},"modified":"2021-12-21T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T17:44:09","slug":"where-is-ghosts-filmed-bbc-one-sitcom-locations","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/where-is-ghosts-filmed-bbc-one-sitcom-locations\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Ghosts filmed? BBC One sitcom locations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Published: Tuesday, 21 December 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The BAFTA-nominated team behind BBC One\u2019s Ghosts are returning to West Horsley Place in the New Year, with the grand countryside estate doubling for the sitcom\u2019s haunted setting, Button House.<\/p>\n

They will be busy getting to work on the recently confirmed fourth series of Ghosts<\/a>, which is likely to include another round of hilarious antics as well as more details on the unfortunate history of the paranormal characters.<\/p>\n

In their ethereal form, most of the inhabitants of Button House are not able to leave the grounds, meaning the vast majority of Ghosts<\/a> is shot on location at West Horsley Place.<\/p>\n

This has proven particularly convenient since the pandemic began, as most television shows are now somewhat restricted in how far they can travel during a shoot.<\/p>

Ghosts chronicles how young couple Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) share a huge ancestral home with a group of fussy ghouls, while also attempting to renovate the dilapidated property.<\/p>\n

It may surprise some to learn that the house is similar in real-life to how it appears in the series, something RadioTimes.com\u00a0<\/strong>saw first-hand when we visited the set back in 2020.<\/p>\n

Producer Matthew Mulot showed us around the huge house, which becomes a bustling hive of activity as the crew behind Ghosts prepares for a shoot.<\/p>\n

The team arrives six weeks before filming starts to begin ageing down the property and moving in props, although the manor has also retained some of its original items.<\/p>\n

The most valuable were sold by Bamber and Christina Gascoigne to raise vital funds for the West Horsley Place Trust, which is seeking to rescue and restore the Grade I listed building and its surrounding estate.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that the crew take the greatest care to ensure that nothing of historical value is damaged or affected by their activity, leaving West Horsley Place exactly as they found it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe start reinstating everything on our way out so by the time we\u2019re filming our last scene of the last day, almost everything is back to how it was bar that one space that we\u2019re filming in,\u201d Mulot explains.<\/p>\n

\""The\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
The Drawing Room at West Horsley Place. Photo: Francesco Guidicini<\/span><\/figcaption> Photo: Francesco Guidicini<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Nevertheless, they get the most value out of their location as possible, utilising virtually every room for scenes or storage and finding inventive workarounds for the most ambitious scenes.<\/p>\n

In the opening of series one, an elderly woman passes away in the master bedroom and we see her ghost float up above her before disappearing \u2013 a scene that was actually filmed in a completely different part of the house.<\/p>\n

Mulot recalled: \u201cThe truth is, there\u2019s not an awful lot of room in [the bedroom] to be floating a lady around, so in the ballroom we set up a massive green screen, and we had Ania [Marson] stood on a green box on her tiptoes pretending to float.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trick was, we had a camera that was up high and it just slowly moved down against the green screen so then the effect was that it looked like she was rising up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a number, but because it was the beginning of episode one, we wanted to do something that was quite visually arresting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Charlotte\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
BBC<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

The production team behind Ghosts have pulled off several ambitious sequences at West Horsley Place, but believe the hard work is always worth it in service to comedy.<\/p>\n

Mulot continued: \u201cWe do have to weigh up how complicated it is, how expensive it is, how funny it is \u2013 and if it\u2019s funny, it\u2019s worth tackling one and two.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s not funny, we\u2019re like \u2018we\u2019re not spending X amount of money and X amount of time doing that\u2019. But the [writers] are hilarious and the scripts are great, so more often than not if they write it we just find a way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was the case with the so-called \u201cplague pit\u201d scenes, featuring a large cluster of ghosts who reside in the basement of the house \u2013 which are actually filmed in a room next door to the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Mulot revealed: \u201cThere\u2019s just a room that\u2019s not a basement at all, but we just blackout all of the windows, we cover over the doors to the kitchen with the boiler and some other things, and we basically just create that.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be fair, if we did have a basement, filming down in it would probably be a nightmare. It\u2019s already quite dark and claustrophobic, because the idea is there\u2019s sort of infinite plague victims down there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Ghosts\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
BBC Pictures<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

For the 2020 Christmas special, the production team were tasked with transforming parts of West Horsley Place into completely different locations for a series of flashbacks about Simon Farnaby\u2019s deceased politician, Julian Fawcett MP.<\/p>\n

The episode opens with him giving a speech in the House of Commons, filmed in the house against a green screen setup, while his Westminster office was also created from dressing up one of the many rooms at the team\u2019s disposal.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more impressively, the designers were able to turn a small area at the back of the house into the outside of a nightclub on a busy city street for another scene showing Julian in his mortal days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey brought Soho to the middle of the countryside,\u201d Farnaby told\u00a0RadioTimes.com<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, the flashback in the Christmas episode is contained to a single room in the house, dressed up to look like a previous residence of Lady Button (Martha Howe-Douglas) and her mother (Jennifer Saunders).<\/p>\n

West Horsley Place is currently under renovation in real life, meaning that some of the scaffolding spotted throughout series one was real, as opposed to set dressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can just incorporate it into our story that that\u2019s just work they\u2019re having done, rather than the real-life builders are genuinely coming back the day after we finish filming to continue working in that room,\u201d Mulot said.<\/p>\n

West Horsley Place Trust hopes to turn the property into a welcoming space for the community to share and enjoy with arts, history, wellbeing and nature at its heart.<\/p>\n