Poor Rose McIver. The New Zealand actor rose to fame as Liv, the undead star of the CW’s horror-dramedy iZombie. Now, she’s traded the undead for the regular dead in her new CBS sitcom Ghosts, where she sees...well, you know.
Ghosts has a rather Beetlejuician premise: Samantha (McIver) and her husband Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) are willed a giant house by an unnamed relative and move in only to discover that the place is haunted by a motley crew of spirits. Where it mainly deviates is that Sam wants to turn the place into a bed-and-breakfast and that the ghosts all come from very distinct eras. Enjoy the first trailer:
I’m not sure how I feel about this. McIver is a delight, unsurprisingly, but all the ghosts seem like very specific, very overused historical stereotypes. Here’s the full list, courtesy of the official press release: “The departed souls are a close-knit, eclectic group that includes a saucy Prohibition-era lounge singer, a pompous 1700s militiaman, a ‘60s hippie fond of hallucinogens, an overly upbeat ‘80s scout troop leader, a cod-obsessed Viking explorer from 1009, a slick ‘90s finance bro, a sarcastic and witty Native from the 1500s, and a society woman and wife of an 1800s robber baron who is Samantha’s ancestor, to name a few.”
To be fair, this trailer feels like it’s made up entirely of footage from the show’s pilot, which has to do the heavy lifting of establishing the show’s premise and its characters. It’s entirely possible that there’s more to the bevy of spirits haunting the house than clichés, and I certainly hope so. We’ll see this autumn when Ghosts —which co-stars Danielle Pinnock, Brandon Scott Jones, Richie Moriarty, Asher Grodman, Sheila Carrasco, Román Zaragoza, Devan Chandler Long (Flex Mentallo from Doom Patrol), and Rebecca Wisocky—premieres on CBS’s Thursday line-up.
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