Review of My Partner the Ghost

The 1960s produced a consistent number of imaginative UK television shows that, from science fiction and the supernatural, to crime dramas with international sleuths and adventurers, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) fused the supernatural with the hardboiled detective genre in an engaging style. Thus, the adventures of Jeff Randall and his ghostly partner, Marty Hopkirk (who only Jeff can see) makes for a great team, a factor helped by the obvious onscreen charisma of Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope (and not forgetting the contribution of Annette Andre as Jeannie, whose widowed life gives the series a sense of poignancy as Marty helplessly and invisibily looks on). As such, our private investigator gets into all kinds of scrapes, only to be helped (and frequently saved) by his spectral friend. Ok, the effects are dated and were not exactly sophisticated in the first place (obvious strings on flying vases, jerky edits, Marty always casting a shadow and tripping over some foliage in one scene), but who cares when the writing and acting is so engaging? Not me, that's for sure. However, while many reviewers lament the fact that not that many episodes were made, it was probably a good thing. This is because each episode pretty much follows a standard formula, with Jeff ignoring Marty's warnings about a case and ending up being overpowered and captured by an assortment of gangsters and heavies, duped by duplicitous women, tied to various items of furniture, or locked in a myriad of rooms. All of this results in Marty having to contact a conveniently large number of local mediums, people in a hypnotic trance (who can hear Marty's voice within their mesmerised state), or swinging party goers mucking about with Ouija boards to get the police a-rushing to Jeff's rescue (and they always do, without asking any questions). Indeed, you could play an enjoyable drinking game based on how many times Jeff is knocked unconscious per episode (not forgetting a secondary game based on how many times Jeff is accused of committing the crimes he is investigating by the police). Consequently, given the number of beatings, concussions and near-death scrapes Jeff gets into (and the fact that he is always broke), you wonder why he sticks with the PI game at all (especially when he cleans up at a poker game, aided by Marty's ability to see all of the other players' cards - he could be rich on the pro-poker circuit!). Consequently, the narrative deja vu does become a little wearisome and so it is difficult to see where the show could have gone in any further series (lacking the almost endless inventive possibilities of alternative shows such as The Avengers, for instance). However, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) remains a delightful and original series, and you just go with formula due to the charisma of Jeff and Marty, and it is a shame that we did not get a concluding episode as the series was cut short.