The Canterville Ghost

It was commissioned by BYU from the BBC. So its rating is for kids of all ages. If your'e a fan of British Television there are many familiar faces in this 4 episode miniseries. The Executive Producer & Writer also worked on 2 of my favorite British cozy mysteries: Father Brown and Shakespeare & Hathaway. Once I got past the fake American accents of James Lance & Carolyn Catz who play the parents, I enjoyed how the mystery unfolded. I liked seeing the gothic mansion & british countryside etc. It was filmed in UK. Available on the BYU Tv. Im watching their free app on my Roku device and there have been no ads.

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.

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.

Ignore the off-putting opening minutes of this, where Caroline Catz and James Lance try to speak with American accents. This is a well made and enjoyable family entertainment with some fine performances from the rather large cast. (I thought Laurel Waghorn was particularly good as Virginia Otis.)

I don't know how much this deviates from the original story by Oscar Wilde, but I thought this version was well written and quite affecting as Sir Simon's backstory is revealed.

As a Briton, I didn't care much for some of the UK versus US stuff, but I guess this had to have an element of locals versus immigrants and railing against the strange ways of foreigners.

Right from the start you know they didn't have much money to spend on this production.

There is a 'horse riding' scene that looks like something from a 1930s comedy.

The father is wearing a wig straight out of the dressing up box, yet the show won an Emmy for outstanding makeup and hairstyling!

The mother has an 'American' accent that changes often, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. I expect more from Caroline Katz even if the budget didn't include money for a voice coach. We will never be able to mock Dick van Dyke's 'cockney' accent again!

BYUtv part funded this so it will have been shown in America, I assume it was re-dubbed.

On the plus side Lizzy Connelly has fun playing 'Moppy' Stilton, her description of her 'charity' work in Africa is hilarious and maybe rather too close to the truth.

Overall it passed the time and the whole family can watch it but it should have been much better.