Posted in: BBC, CBS, TV | Tagged: bbc, cbs, ghosts, inside no 9, Matthew Boynton, reese shearsmith, sitcom

Ghosts Co-Creator on Scrapped Character Idea for Inside No. 9 Actor

Ghosts co-creator Matthew Boynton revealed details on a character they wanted Reece Shearsmith (Inside No. 9) to play before it was scrapped.

Ghosts was the BBC's biggest sitcom hit for years and spawned a US remake on CBS that's also a hit. Original series co-creator Mathew Baynton has also co-written some episodes of the CBS version and had written one character that he wanted Reece Shearsmith from Inside No. 9 to play.

Baynton also played dead Romantic poet-wannabe Thomas Thorne on the series and talked about his experience making the sitcom at the launch of a new behind-the-scenes companion book titled Ghosts: Brought to Life that was just published this week. The series attracted a number of guest stars over the course of its run, including celebrity fans Jennifer Saunders and Kylie Minogue, as well as past collaborators of the cast and crew, especially for the series' Christmas specials and Children in Need specials. Of course, Kylie could see ghosts, too!

"There was a character that we scrapped," Boynton told The Radio Times. "An early idea was that there was a guy who haunted an empty field where there used to be a house next door. And that was going to be a running gag through the first series, was that every now and again you'd just cut to this lonely ghost in a big, long wide [shot]. Just a tiny figure, sort of shouting across at the house, trying to get anyone to have a conversation with. In my head, that was always Reece Shearsmith. But then we didn't have that part in it."

Boynton said the cut character still had a small influence on the storyline of the early scripts of the series.

"When Mike and Alison move in, they all take against them and want to haunt them out," he explained. "It was this idea that Alison would be able to point to the ghost next door and say, 'If we can't save this house, it will end up getting knocked down and you'll be like Pete next door'. So, there was a clear image of a worse fate for them that would keep them in that unhappy truce with her. But then we'd overwritten the scripts and it was a really easy thing for the production to cut, so we don't have to cast someone and film them in a field."

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