TV Talk: Western Pa. native scares up comedy ‘Ghosts’ for CBS

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

The fall’s funniest new comedy, CBS’s “Ghosts,” premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. with back-to-back episodes.

Based on a BBC comedy of the same title that’s available in the U.S. on HBO Max, CBS’s “Ghosts” follows Samantha (Rose McIver, “iZombie”) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) who inherit an upstate New York mansion haunted by departed souls, including a pompous 1700s militiaman (Brandon Scott Jones), a 1980s Scout troop leader (Richie Moriarty), a Viking explorer (Devan Chandler Long), the wife of an 1800s robber baron (Rebecca Wisocky), a Prohibition-era lounge singer (Danielle Pinnock) and a 1960s hippie (Sheila Carrasco).

The ghosts are intrigued by the new owners but terrified of them turning the place into a bed and breakfast. Eventually, the human Samantha gains the ability to see the ghosts, which creates new complications since her husband cannot see them.

“Ghosts” was adapted for CBS by writers Joe Wiseman and 1993 Altoona High School grad Joe Port, writing partners who previously worked on “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” “The Last O.G.,” “1600 Penn,” “The Office” and “Just Shoot Me.”

They adapted the Britcom “The IT Crowd” for NBC, but that series never made it to air. They also wrote the ABC pilot “What About Barb?,” a distaff take on the 1991 movie “What About Bob?” It didn’t get picked up to series either. Port said he thinks a failed CBS comedy pilot about vampires the pair wrote made CBS executives think of them when searching for American writers to adapt “Ghosts.”

“I loved it immediately,” Port said of the British “Ghosts,” and because its ghost characters are British archetypes, the writers saw the series as adaptable by subbing in American archetypes. “Some of them bear quite a resemblance to their British counterparts, and others are big departures. But that’s just based on what was right for this area, where this house is and what kind of American history took place in that region.”

CBS’s “Ghosts” pilot was three days away from filming in Los Angeles in March 2020 when the pandemic scuttled production. They were able to shoot the pilot in December 2020; when ordered to series in May, production relocated to Montreal.

A history major in college, Port initially had dreams of making his living as a political cartoonist after drawing cartoons for the University of Pennsylvania’s student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

His brother, Moses, is also a TV writer, most recently writing on NBC’s “Superstore” and Netflix’s “Atypical.” Seeing Moses get work in the TV business opened Joe’s eyes to the notion of TV writing as a possible career, which wasn’t on his radar growing up in Altoona.

As a single-camera comedy in a sea of multicam sitcoms on CBS, “Ghosts” is an odd fit, but Port said the network hasn’t tried to fit a square peg in a round hole.

“We’re not really trying to tailor it to be like their other shows,” Port said. “We’re just trying to make it its own thing and hope people watch it and like it.”

‘Tough as Nails’

While on the subject of folks from Johnstown-Altoona making TV for CBS, the third-season premiere of reality competition “Tough as Nails” (9 p.m. Wednesday), features 29-year-old Johnstown native Christine Conners, who currently lives in Glendora, Calif., among its competitors.

Louise Keoghan, who co-created the series with husband/host Phil Keoghan, said apprentice ironworker Conners impressed producers with her enthusiasm for learning.

“She showed up to the “Tough as Nails” job site every day ready to take on new challenges however grueling and mentally taxing,” Keoghan said. “Although she was surrounded by experienced tradespeople who are twice her age, Christine showed she is wise beyond her years and, as a result, one of the surprises of the season.”

‘United States of Al’

Just before “Ghosts,” CBS’s “The United States of Al” (8:30 p.m. Thursday) returns for its second season with a ripped-from-the-headlines premiere.

The Chuck Lorre-executive-produced sitcom about an Afghan interpreter, Al (Adhir Kalyan), who moves to the U.S. to live with his Marine veteran best friend Riley (Parker Young), had shot one-and-a-half episodes for its new season when Kabul fell to the Taliban in Afghanistan in mid-August.

Kudos to CBS and the show’s production company, Warner Bros., for supporting the show’s writers and producers who created a new season premiere about the fall of Kabul and Al and Riley’s efforts to get Al’s sister out of the country. It’s an intense, well-meaning half-hour that largely forgoes laughs in favor of real emotion. A reworked version of the planned season premiere will air at a later date.