‘I smell invasion’: How this new sitcom flips the script on colonisation

If you are going to play dead, there are certain rules you must stick to. For one, you can walk through things, but you can’t bump into things. You can sit on chairs and walk up stairs, but you can’t fall through them. You also – mostly – can’t pick things up or move things.

“It’s more difficult than you think,” says Brent Hill. “Because we’re so used to just casually picking things up, or sitting down or leaning on furniture. It was difficult for me because having a spear through the chest was like a Laurel and Hardy or Three Stooges routine, where if I turn too quickly, I’d knock over a vase or something, and that can’t happen.”

Yes, a spear through his chest. Hill plays Gideon, the bewigged and long departed former naval commander of the Third Fleet, in Ghosts Australia.

“Gideon is a ghost with the hair of Margaret Thatcher and the sensibilities of a goose,” says Hill, who also played King George III in the musical Hamilton. “He’s stubborn, and when everyone thinks of a goose – ‘Oh, you silly goose’ – they think it’s funny. And then you realise, actually, geese are incredibly territorial and aggressive, and chase people down, they honk and they’re absurd and a bit ridiculous. And that’s Gideon. He’s a 200-year-old ghost who doesn’t want to change but is forced to by having a new breathing person who they can suddenly interact with.”

Gideon is one of several spirits haunting Ramshead Manor, a country estate that is inherited by city lawyer Kate, played by Tamala (who goes by just one name), when her elderly uncle suddenly dies. Faced with being able to afford only a “pretty murdery” apartment – where the toilet is conveniently located in the kitchen – Kate and her partner, Sean (Rowan Witt), pluck for the spooky estate over studio apartment hell.

“She’s a really strong force of a woman,” Tamala says of Kate. “She’s incredible. She has this quality about her where I feel like nothing could take her down, nothing could perturb her. In pre-production, we described her as a shark, in a way that sharks can’t swim backwards, they just keep moving forward, which is very helpful in this show’s setting, where she’s got a lot of people that need things from her at all times.”

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because the series is a local version of the hit UK comedy Ghosts, which has also been adapted in the US, France and Germany, with a Spanish version planned. The original comes from two of the writers of the thoroughly silly – and mostly accurate – Horrible Histories, and each country has adapted it to their particular backstories. The British version, for example, has a woman who was burnt at the stake during the witch trials of the 1600s, while another is disgraced Tory politician who died of a heart attack after a 1993 sex scandal. The US version, meanwhile, includes Sasappis, a Native American hunter, while the French version has Francois, the ghost of a French Nazi collaborator.

The premise remains roughly the same across all versions – a young couple (“breathers”) move into a house filled with ghosts, and they must all learn to live together – but what stops the Australian version from being a cheap knockoff (hello, The Office Australia) is that it’s bold enough to chart its own path through some unexpected comedic terrain, such as the housing crisis, colonisation and Indigenous land rights.

“It’s not just a rinse and repeat, copy and paste at all,” says Tamala, who has starred in the ABC dramas Cleverman and Nowhere Boys. “It’s actually an opportunity to showcase our country’s particular history, and all the different eras and all the different characters and cultures that we have.”

Apart from Gideon, the other ghosts include Irish hotelier Eileen (Mandy McElhinney), Joon (George Zhao), a Chinese goldfields prospector from the 1850s, Lindy (Michelle Brasier), a 1980s aerobics instructor, glamorous young sheep station heiress Miranda (Ines English), and tattooed bikie Satan (Jackson Tozer), who ends up as Gideon’s sidekick. There’s also a gaggle of convicts in the basement, and Ned Kelly even pops up.

And while Kate, a First Nations woman, is generally welcomed by all the ghosts, Gideon is not impressed, as he very much considers Ramshead Manor to be his land.

“I smell invasion,” says Gideon, when Kate and Sean first appear at the house.

“Aye, that would be yourself,” deadpans Eileen back to him.

It’s a gasp-worthy joke that sets the tone of Ghosts Australia perfectly, as it gleefully leans into all the uncomfortable bits of the past 200 or so years of our history.

“Humour serves a very important purpose if done correctly,” Tamala says. “And we have two incredible First Nations writers – Steph Tisdell and Shontell Ketchell – who I believe have done a brilliant job at balancing truth and humour.”

The decision to include First Nations themes was made by the creative team before Tamala even auditioned. “They absolutely made the right choice,” she says. “We cannot make a show about the different eras of Australian history without a First Nations person at the helm.”

Hill agrees. “Our history goes a long way back, and so a large part of this is like, well, we have to figure out a way forward of dealing with our history with both humour and heart,” he says.

“It was difficult, as the real issues are, but we talked a lot about it, and we made a lot of changes. Tamala and myself talked deeply about our characters’ journey and the relationship they have because Gideon, ultimately, we’re taking a coloniser and we put him into the empathetic shoes of what it is like to be displaced.

“And that is a big, big challenge for Gideon. And it’s about suddenly having a character who is not used to holding space for anybody, having to create space internally for other people. It’s really difficult, but we feel it’s important. We don’t shy away from it because it is part of our history, and we’ve certainly aimed to address it in a way that is with humour and with heart.”

Indigenous spirits are also present. For Tamala, a proud Bundjalung and Lama Lama woman, that meant doing something she hadn’t seen on Australian television before: honouring Country. It’s a moving and simple scene that sees Kate picking up a handful of sand and then scattering it across the land.

“There’s lots of different ways that you can honour Country, and that’s different mob to mob,” Tamala says. “But the way that we did that with the sand was how the local mob of that area in Perth [where the show was filmed] honoured their process.

“I actually got to meet some elders and some mob from that area that we were filming in, and they talked me through that protocol and that process, and then we got to include it in the show, which is really incredible. It was a real honour to be a part of and really special to show audiences.”

And while Kate and the ghosts can see each other, the one person who can’t see the ghosts is Sean. As Witt describes him, Sean is “100 per cent” committed to Kate, so if she wants to leave the city and turn a rundown manor into a boutique hotel, he will back her all the way.

“It is important that Kate and Sean are each other’s forever people,” Witt says. “They just get each other. There is something nice about playing two people who are unashamedly each other’s best friends, and that’s the window through which the audience can view all the ghostly silliness that’s spiralling around them.

“And our function as a couple was very clear in that regard – to help aid the funny but never compete with it. Tamala is such an effortlessly hilarious and savvy rock in that regard, who is holding everything so gently, that it always felt immensely joyful with her.”

Ghosts Australia premieres at 8.30pm on Sunday, November 2, on Ten and Paramount+.

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