Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! On the 28th of May of this year, fellow Pipes-Phobe Adam Hickey dropped us a line to report a potential new Pipes sighting. The section of the programme in question occurs approximately 25 minutes and 39 seconds in, and purports to show a dark, shadowy figure in the background of a newspaper clipping featuring Pam, Suzanne, and Kim, in the children's bedroom. Now, as we all know, there have been nine confirmed sightings of Pipes so far (though, admittedly, I did bish on the Tweet announcing this and forgot #9). During Behind the Curtains, director Lesley Manning is heard to say she believes there are more - potentially 13 in total, ostensibly leaving four left to find. To be a Ghostwatch fan is to know what it is like to scour the DVD for clues, decades on from transmission. Over the years, false positives have come and gone, with the most recent find confirmed care of cross-referencing with production call sheets. Despite this sighting very much falli

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Rather excitingly, news has reached us that Ghostwatch Director, Lesley Manning is helming a bold new production, Happy Hour. The comedy-drama, written by Andy Walker will run Upstairs At The Gatehouse, Highgate Village, until the 28th of May. Press Night was just last evening and tickets are now available at the award-winning London Fringe Theatre, well-known for its varied programme of drama, musicals and... well, fringe theatre. Enticing blurb incoming!

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! As development continues on our upcoming GHOSTWATCH: 'On The Night' Blu-ray, this seems the perfect opportunity to relax, unwind, and take in a brand-new exhibition at Worthing Museum, now open until 16th July 2023. Recently, I was fortunate enough to speak with the man in the show's spotlight, the exceptional Richard Drew, Production Designer, who, we all know, worked with Ken Starkey in 1992 to bring the sets to life on everyone's favourite Hallowe'en Hoax. Richard's experience in television production is now so extensive, his work has been made the focus of an exciting new show entitled, Filling The Void - 35 years of TV production design. I was fortunate enough to speak with Richard and find out more about the event... RICH: Hi Richard, how did this exhibition come about, and could you tell us a little about your connection to the venue? RICHARD: I approached the museum nearly a year ago about the idea of doing it. I’d fancied doi

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Ever so imperceptibly infinitesimally belated news, but I am happy to report that, once again, this year's annual National Séance went tremendously well. Thanks so much to everybody for joining in on Hallowe'en Night and making the event so special. I gather, #NationalSeance2022 was trending at #13 on the Most Tweeted in 24hrs leader-board. Not bad going! This year, I tried out the Twitter Space option, which, when deluged with lots of messages coming through all at once, proved a bit tricky to operate single-handed, but thankfully, it all seemed to coalesce on the night. Such fun!

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! It never ceases to amaze just how well GHOSTWATCH plays on the big screen. By its creators' own admission, the programme was specifically designed to squeeze the most of our boxy television sets, circa 1992. The speculative technology, as peppered throughout the narrative, (remote cameras, thermographic readouts, light pencils, and the like) was almost parodic in its clairvoyant spin on where the medium was heading in the never-ending quest for modernisation. The programme remains as perceptive today as it was then and, thanks to its fidelity in transcribing the language of Light Entertainment television of the time, remains an immensely useful yardstick in understanding the nature and evolution of the medium. Depending on your viewpoint, thirty years is either a long time or momentary flash in history, be it collective or personal. I was just seven-years-old on the night of transmission and, whilst sitting in on one of the recent screenings in Sheffield,

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Our retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains held its first screening at BAFTA Piccadilly in late 2012. It was released on DVD in 2013, and during that year the BFI became the first streaming service to include the film on its Mediatheque servers, amongst some 95,000 carefully selected titles. Also around that time, the bookshop at BFI Southbank very kindly made available a number of DVD copies (now sold-out), which led to this somewhat meta snapshot, taken by Stephen Volk, of staff watching the doc before recognising him and eagerly confessing their proud #PipesPhobes status! The British Film Institute has been a supporter of both this project and GHOSTWATCH since the early days; first spearheading a truly awesome DVD release in 2002 in time for the programme's Tenth Anniversary. Now, with great pride, we can officially announce that they have done it again, in being the first to bring the documentary – now 30 years in the making – to