Rentaghost: the spooky kids show that is much bleaker than you remember

Rewatching Bob Block’s 70s kids’ sitcom for Halloween reveals some surprisingly scary themes at work

If your mind ever wanders back to the childrens’ TV show Rentaghost, chances are you’ll think of the gaudy 80s version, with characters like Hazel the McWitch, Nadia Popov and Dobbin the Pantomime Horse.

But it didn’t start that way at all. The first series of Bob Block’s comedy for kids aired in 1976 with only three main ghosts. Five episodes are newly available on the BBC Store in time for Halloween – and they are a lot bleaker than you might imagine. Here’s why:

The show starts with a main character nearly getting killed

Fred Mumford is already dead, as it happens, but kids watching in 1976 weren’t to know that. Rentaghost opens with him appearing suddenly in the middle of a road and having to leap out the way of a speeding car.

He is concealing his death from his parents to get money

Mumford has been dead for six months, but his parents don’t know that; they think he went on a trip abroad. Consequently, episode one largely consists of him visiting his folks, avoiding mentioning that he is a ghost, then borrowing £30 to pay the rent on Rentaghost’s London offices, which he explains is his new business venture.

His dad doesn’t like him anyway

There is no love lost between Mr Mumford and his son. John Dawson played the role of Fred’s dad as a man constantly suppressing an explosion of exasperated rage. In one episode, as the ghosts try to entertain hospital patients with a magic show, Mumford Jr ends up trapped in a filing cabinet. There follows a scene where his dad delivers a long rant about what a disappointment he has always been, then shoves his head back down into the cabinet to close it.

The whole show is essentially about failure

Fred Mumford is dreadful at being a ghost. Hubert Davenport, played by Michael Darbyshire, is bullied by his long-dead Victorian “Mama” who regularly appears to scold him about the vulgarities of the modern world. And jester Timothy Claypole, performed majestically by Michael Staniforth, is unable to control his mischievous whims. Their business is a disaster (as epitomised by the chart on their wall).

They get out of scrapes by making people think they are having mental health episodes

To avoid a brush with the law, the ghosts repeatedly disappear and reappear a boat and a tent before a bemused policeman until he calls off the chase, and radios his control room to say he needs to take the day off. On another occasion, to conceal the fact that Mr Claypole has made a patient disappear, Mr Davenport pretends to be the ill man in his hospital bed. The nurse examining the ghost imposter is, naturally, unable to detect a pulse, and leaves the ward believing her patient has died.

It’s nowhere near as bad as you might expect

The sets and costumes are obviously low budget and 70s. Aimed at kids, much of the show’s appeal was in the slapstick comedy and silly visual puns Claypole cannot resist making. Rewatched as an adult, it is much more obvious that Block’s writing owes a huge debt not just to pantomime, but also to the fine British tradition of farce at the theatre.

It will ruin one of Doctor Who’s villains for you

At the end of his era as the Doctor, Patrick Troughton faced a renegade Time Lord, the War Chief, who was helping an evil alien race. Their plan was so vast that the Doctor was forced to call on his own people for help – ultimately leading them to change Doctor Who into Jon Pertwee and exile him to Earth. The War Chief was played menacingly by Edward Brayshaw.

A few years later, Brayshaw took on the role of hapless Mr Meaker, the Rentaghost crew’s landlord – who frequently ends up on the receiving end of whatever has gone awry with the ghost’s plans. By episode four he complains to Fred Mumford with the immortal line of dialogue: “Since you’ve been renting this office I’ve had a birdcage on my head, a premature appendicitis, and now a king-sized lamb chop dropped on me.”

The theme tune is the earworm to end all earworms

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of rewatching Rentaghost some 40 years after it first aired is the fact that for days afterwards, you’ll find the theme tune popping into your head at inopportune moments. Written and sung by Staniforth, it is etched in the mind of anyone who grew up watching childrens’ TV in the 1970s.

All together now:

“If your mansion house needs haunting just call Rentaghost,

We’ve got spooks, and ghouls, and freaks, and fools, at Rentaghost,

Hear the Phantom of the Opera, sing a haunting melody,

Remember what you see, is not a mystery, but Rentaghost.”

• Rentaghost series one is available to buy from the BBC Store
  

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