The Canterville Ghost

Tech billionaire Hiram Otis moves his family from The States to Canterville Chase, an English Mansion, with an unexpected extra, a ghost, in the form of Simon de Canterville.

First off, in this day and age, why do we still have to suffer Brits playing Americans with abysmal accents, and vice versa, now I'm a big fan of Caroline Catz and James Lance, but those accents are excruciating, and sadly put me off straight away.

The first three episodes are all very poor, to say that too many liberties were taken is a huge understatement. Only in episode four is there anything worth seeing. The special effects genuinely look as though they've come from 1986.

What so unforgivable, is the pacing, it's supposed to be a ghost story, but it's just so slow and boring.

The standout, by a mile is Haydn Gwynne, she manages to make something out of the character, and makes the wicked Grandmother pretty interesting, sadly she's trying to swim upstream.

The adaptation with David Niven is superior in every possible way, please watch that, then compare it to this, for the most part this was very poor.

5/10.

This story has been told and retold in film many times. This remake is a fun rendition with great location shots and beautiful camera work! Worth the time!

Firstly it's hilarious the featured review mocks the father's terrible wig. Which is in fact the actor's real hair... That said the American accents are indeed terrible, the twins acting is insufferable, the CGI and greenscreen has been done as cheaply as possible and it shows. There's even a talking rat for goodness sakes! It's entirely populated with clichés - cod Shakespearean dialogue, upper class twits, optimistic can do Yanks, picturesque Romany caravans and castles... Unless you're watching with kids I'd definitely skip this bad adaptation.

In the UK this was shown as 2 feature length episodes which made it drag somewhat. I imagine 4 bitesize episodes made it more palatable for the US market.

I followed James Lance here bc he was so terrific as Trent Crimm and this seemed like an oddly similar premise, only with Lasso, they hired Americans for American roles and Brits for British roles - and with this show, no such effort was made - and it shows. The script must have been written by a child and the third grader's friends are the producers, but the idea is cute and it's sweet that they're going for Americans inspire Brits Part II. Still, sadly, even the wonderful Anthony Head is AWFUL here. The only value in this show is unintentional humor, but....a laugh's a laugh. Unless this was produced for a British Nickolodeon type of channel for elementary school viewers, this one's a pass.

I thought this mini series was a great family series. There isn't a bunch of violence or sex and it is family entertainment. I miss really great series' like this . I hope they make more.