In the original, Robin is from some thousands of years past, Mary from 300-400 years past and I think everyone else is from within 200 years past, which is well within the time of European settlement.
I wonder if they’ll continue the tradition of a ghost with an arrow through his neck who was the leader of a group that looks very similar to the Boy Scouts but does not infringe on their trademark.
I think Sir Humphrey (the usually-headless ghost) is a century or two older than Mary. I put him at c. 1400, her at c. 1600.
For what it’s worth, Wikipedia says Humphrey died in 1575, and Mary 1612. So Humphrey is older, but not by all that much if Wikipedia is to be believed.
I’m with you so far; what’s your pitch for the second character?
In 1988 [200 years of Australia’s British occupation], a musical was adapted from the work of the eminent historian Manning Clark. I saw it - it pretty much stank, and mercifully sank, but the poster does give a nice cross-section of representative characters in Australian history.
Reference to tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation almost slipped past, but apart from that you can more or less pick all the characters for Ghosts [Australia] straight off the poster. And it will be backed by History.
The percentage of ghosts who have not yet been sucked off always skews to the more recent ones. Robin appears to be something of a special case with a long delayed departure.
In other words, it wouldn’t be likely to have more than one aborigine from the long past in the show. Although a combo of an ancient one with a modern one would be interesting.
And I don’t think we’ve ever been given a reason why some ghosts ascend while others remain. In other shows or movies, the usual explanation is that the ghost lingers due to unfinished business here on Earth but I have no idea what that means for Robin, for example.
Inthe US version - its implicitely assumed to be ‘unfinished business’ and in the two examples we have (Sam’s Mom and Teenage cholera ghost) it was pretty clear that was the reason.
Sending Elias to hell may have been similar (made it obvious he was irredeemable) - or it might have been Hetty’s ghost power.
Hetty’s ghost power is not sending people to Hell. She’s just been in the mix when people have gone to Hell. I think there was an episode where she said specifically that if her ghost power was sending people to Hell, all of the current Ghosts would be there. And if she never actually said that, it’s certainly true of her character.
What’s with the Devil, the guy who kinda looks like Jesus, the very small man underneath Ned Kelly, and the dog with the dynamite in his mouth?
Ghosts Australia absolutely needs to have the Devil, a ghost dog, and Ned Kelly. I’m not sure where he did his thing, but if the setting of the series jibes with Ned Kelly’s escapades, and they put him in the show, the jokes will write themselves.
Though in both the original UK and US versions, only those who died at the house are present, so unless you can find a location which Ned Kelly and the others died, it wouldn’t work.
Googling, he was executed at the Old Melbourne Gaol, now a museum.
Good point, and since he died in prison it won’t work. Scratch Ned Kelly off the list, but I’m sure the writers can produce a bushwacker archetype for a character.
Sorry - I should have added a smiley there - it was a bit of humor. We still don’t know what her Ghost power is.
The Devil and Jesus play themselves, the small man was Great War period Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who had all manner of issues, and the dog is the Loaded dog, star of one of writer Henry Lawson’s [5th from left] stories.
There was also the Aussie tv show Glitch that involved a cross-section of 6 dead Australians coming back to life.
It could be someone who tried to convince everyone that he was Ned Kelly.
Just finished watching the first episode of Ghosts Australia. It hits all of the standard story beats of a Ghosts premier: mansion owner dies, young couple inherits it, the woman gets injured, sees ghosts at the end of the episode. Nothing especially original or justifying a localized remake in the first episode.
The ghosts shown so far:
Gideon: 1800s(?) British naval officer. Has sliver of wood through his chest, I don’t think it is an arrow. So Isaac-ish in being a military guy, but pompous.
Satan: 1990s motorcycle gang guy. He’s the burly, not too bright Thor/Robin character.
Lindy: 1980s aerobics instructor. Something like Flower but not quite as dumb.
Eileen: Irish potato famine survivor. Personality a bit like Hetty but from a lower social class.
Miranda: Earlyish 1900s young, snooty society lady. Not really a good match for anyone from the UK or US versions.
Joon: 1800s Chinese gold miner. Has no pants.
There are also 6 basement ghosts who were “convicts”.
Ghost powers so far:
Satan: moves stuff
Lindy: effects electricity
Miranda: cold breath can freeze things
Joon: explicitly hasn’t discovered his powers yet.
(No other powers used in first episode.)
Early in the thread we speculated on the racial makeup of the ghosts. So far all of them are white Europeans except for Joon. Possibly one of the convict basement ghosts is a European black woman, but it was dark and they were all grimy, so I’m not sure. I wasn’t really expecting to see any Aboriginal ghosts because many of them have strong taboos about the dead and Australian media (believe it ir not) tries to be respectful about things like that. (At the opening it displays the text “As storytellers we acknowledge and pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders. This program was made on the lands of the Noongar and Gadigal people, and we recognise them as the First People and storytellers.”)
(Sean, the man of the couple, is solidly a white European. The actress who plays Kate, the woman in the couple, is mixed-race Aboriginal and so is her character but she looks super-Caucasian.)
What platform did you watch it on?
The kind of platform that can make you seasick standing on it and everyone around you is saying “yaaargh”.