Ghostwatch

Ghostwatch is a British reality–horror/pseudo-documentary television film, first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992. Written by Stephen Volk, and directed by Lesley Manning, the drama was produced for the BBC anthology series Screen One by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten and Derek Nelson.

Despite having been recorded weeks in advance, the narrative was presented as live television. During and following its first and only UK television broadcast, the show attracted a considerable furor,[1] resulting in an estimated 1,000,000 phone call enquiries to the BBC switchboard on the night of broadcast, comprising a mixture of complaints and praise for the programme's unique presentation.[2]

Ghostwatch has never been repeated on UK television. It has been repeated internationally, on stations such as the Canadian digital channel Scream for Halloween 2004, and the Belgian channel Canvas in 2008. From 2017 to 2019, Ghostwatch was available on the American streaming video service Shudder,[3][4] and was made available on the Internet Archive in 2017.

There have been two UK home video releases. In 2002, the British Film Institute released a 10th Anniversary edition on VHS and DVD, and in 2011, 101 Films issued a DVD release. In 2016, BBC Store made the film available as part of the Frightmares collection, marking Halloween.

A retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains, based on the film's lasting impact, was released on DVD in 2013 (having been in production between 2007 and 2012), featuring interviews with many of the original cast and crew. It too was made available as part of the BBC Store Frightmares collection, and shortly after release, the BFI Mediatheque.