Jim Howick’s most famous work depends on who you’re talking to. Many remember him as chronically ill office grunt Gerard in Peep Show, which launched the careers of Olivia Colman, David Mitchell, Robert Webb and Succession writer Jesse Armstrong. Younger viewers may know him from the hit children’s series Horrible Histories, or as Mr Hendricks, the sweet but bumbling science teacher on Netflix’s smash hit Sex Education. But it’s his work on Ghosts, both on and off screen, that has cemented his place as one of British comedy’s most valuable players.
“Most successful comedy at the moment is biographical, already rooted in truth,” says Howick. “Our show is more of a fundamental sitcom edging on fantasy. We try to balance jokes with heart and pathos – finding an earthy human element was quite hard at first. Then we realised our characters aren’t just ghosts – they’re people.” Whatever the formula, it works.
The show, which will open its fourth series on Friday, centres on married couple Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe), who come into possession of a rundown mansion that’s home to a host of ghosts who have died on the property over the ages.
Among them is caveman Robin (Laurence Rickard), trouserless Tory MP Julian (Simon Farnaby), Second World War army officer The Captain (Ben Willbond) and 80s Scout leader Pat, who died in an arrow shooting accident and is played by Howick, who really was a Scout in his youth.
When we speak, Howick is packing for Edinburgh Fringe. Usually, comedians are a wriggling bag of nerves before they head to the festival – worrying about audiences, about reviews, about how much it will cost. Not Howick. This year, he’s a punter. “I feel like after all the years of trauma, I’ve earned the right to really enjoy myself,” he says, only half-joking.
The 43-year-old first went up to the Fringe with his sketch group Plastic Cowboys 20 years ago. “It was terrifying,” he remembers. “I didn’t really enjoy it. I was just completely overwhelmed by the idea that it was a waste of money.” Their first show was a play, Growing Nowhere, about a young boy whose imaginary shadow refuses to leave him alone – a review from the time likened it to “Grange Hill if it had been staged by David Lynch”.
The trio (made up of Howick, Adam Amos and Robin Savage) didn’t return to the festival until 2006. By that point, Howick had done a few advert voiceovers and played a part in Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 superhero movie Hellboy, so he had “cash to throw at Edinburgh”. The second Plastic Cowboys show went down well, but Howick is the only one still performing.
Ghosts started life as a Muppet Show-style project. “We wanted to create a multi-character, Monty Python type of format,” says Howick. “We went around the houses really. We had lots of ideas about filling the house with ghosts completely and having different ghosts in each room like Royston Vasey. What we ended up with was more like Toy Story or The Bash Street Kids – a small gang who wouldn’t ever come together if they weren’t incarcerated in this house. Everyone wants to be in a gang.”
While the jokes are funny and the stories often touching, the real strength of Ghosts comes in its well-defined characters. “I think people enjoy identifying with a different ghost,” says Howick.
In the case of his own character, “The way [Pat] died was the first element of him coming to life,” says Howick, not noticing his own pun. “That just made us laugh. We built his story around that. We realised that his family were probably still alive, and that they’d be the type of people to come and visit the place where he died.” This train of thought resulted in an episode, “Happy Death Day”, which was not only hilarious, but a real tearjerker.
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And he points to The Captain, who at the start of the series is secretly gay, as having a particular resonance with viewers. “We’ve always had a big LGBTQ+ following. He represents a voice of the stifled and rigid society of his era. He’s become something really special.”
Ghosts must have been an easy “yes” for the BBC when it was commissioned in 2018. Not only was it a much-needed family sitcom, but it also came with a ready-made, built-in audience: the grown-up fans of CBBC series Horrible Histories. It is the cast of that silly, genre-busting sketch series who created and now write Ghosts – Howick, Farnaby, Rickard, Willbond, Mathew Baynton and Martha Howe-Douglas.
“We didn’t write most of that,” says Howick, “we were just actors for hire. But we’re really proud of it. It had a punky feel. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted to do, to a point.”
Often, Horrible Histories would toe the line of suitability on a BBC children’s show. Howick recalls having to “jump through a few hoops” to play Pope Alexander VI as a Marlon Brando-type gangster. “We wanted to see history from the point of view of the naughtiest person in the class. We never lied about it or made things up. It’s all completely factual. But the angle is a naughty one.”
Post-Brexit, a Horrible Histories song from 2008 did the rounds on the internet, in which “typically” British things – tea, sugar, cotton – were (correctly) pointed out to be the result of war and slavery abroad. Right-wing commentators were furious, and Andrew Neil called it “anti-British drivel of a high order”.
Howick sighs with a smile when I bring it up. “The usual suspects kicked off. Matt [Baynton, who appears in the skit] got a lot of stick for it. It was a sketch from 10 years ago and it’s all true. It doesn’t matter if you find it provocative, it’s something we should all know.
“The root cause of these opinions is usually something warped. I imagine it’s down to these people’s education – they should have been taught these kinds of things.”
Horrible Histories came to an end in 2014, but the rise of TikTok has prompted a renaissance for the show. There was a time when it was impossible to scroll through the app without hearing the Adam Ant-inspired song about Dick Turpin or the rollicking tune that listed every British monarch in order. “It does make us feel old, obviously,” says Howick. “It’s always had that appeal to all ages, people from eight to 80 would watch it. Often people who never even had kids would stop us and say they loved it.”
Howick would rather look forward than back. For now, he’s entirely focused on Ghosts, which now has an American remake on CBS. “Because it’s such a young country, there’s a more concentrated period of brutalisation and colonisation, which is simply not funny,” says Howick of translating the idea to American history.
“We didn’t want loads of characters to have died within a hundred years of each other. It would look like the house was cursed. From the start we wanted to collaborate with the network, to find out how far they were willing to go. Would they let us have an LGBTQ+ storyline? Would they let us have a Native American ghost?” They got both.
As for the British version, don’t be surprised if it comes to an end soon. “The dream is five series,” admits Howick. “I think 10 is a ridiculous flogging. You’re on the cusp of losing your shelf life. Five is the optimum.”
Ghosts returns to BBC One at 8.50pm on Friday 23 September