Ghosts review: Families, fall-outs and farewells – The Ghosts Christmas Special was the perfect way to end this wonderful sitcom

Bittersweet seems like a good word to describe Christmas and New Year. There's all the gift-giving and food and fun and games, obviously – that's the sweet part.

But then there's the fact that it goes so quickly, you remember the people absent, and, of course, you've got the pressure of families coming to stay and all their insufferable quirks and foibles.

Which is why bittersweet is the oxymoronically perfect word for Ghosts and its Christmas Special (BBC1, Christmas Day, 7.45pm).

This particular special also constituted this supernatural sitcom's final episode, and what a final episode it was.

Young couple Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) inherited crumbling mansion Button House from a long-lost relative, and ever since an unfortunate accident left Alison with a bump on the head, she has been able to see the house's resident ghosts.

Over the course of five series and couple of Christmas specials, we have come to know this bunch of oddballs from the other side – come to know them, and come to love them.

Everyone has their own favourite – caveman Robin, the stiff-upper-lipped Captain, trouser-less Tory Julian, flibbertigibbet Georgian lady Kitty, headless Humphrey or snooty Lady Fanny.

Obviously, being a long-time Scout, my favourite ghost is Pat – the Yorkshire Scout leader who met his end in the 80s in an accident which left him haunting Button House with an arrow permanently through his neck.

Played by Jim Howick with moustache twitching and eyes huge behind TV screen glasses, Pat is the one who seems most attuned to the living world and the sensitive nature of the relationship he and his fellow ghosts have with Alison and Mike,

Being able to pop through walls at will means there have to be some boundaries, after all.

Pat's backstory was explored in the last Christmas episode, back in 2022, which was equally bittersweet and equally about how families can simultaneously be a source of life-giving joy and soul-sapping misery.

Talking of which, Mike's mum Betty has come to stay at Button House, to help the couple with their new baby, Mia.

The three – and Mike's mum – have come home after the much-anticipated birth, and after a few weeks the lead-up to Christmas has got everyone on edge.

The amount of plot-lines writers Howick and co-star Matthew Baynton – who plays Regency fop Thomas 'Damn your eyes!' Thorne – managed to cram in was astounding.

There was Robin and his efforts to feel more Christmassy, Thomas was trying to suppress his feelings for Alison now the baby had arrived, Kitty was feeling rejected by distracted new mum Alison, Alison was searching for new trainers for Mike, Fanny and Betty were at odds over childcare…

But this half-hour never felt over-stuffed or frenetic. Everything was dealt with in a line or a look, and – not to give anything away – the episode dealt with some big issues with an incredible confidence and skill.

On the face of it, Ghosts is a fairly traditional sitcom; it sets out the situation with some basic rules - like the ghosts can never leave the confines of Button House - and builds the comedy from that.

The denizens of the house are stuck with each other, whether they like it or not, and must come to accept each other's flaws and faults, and come to understand that they make a person's character as much as the good points.

Ultimately, Pat and the rest realise that for them all to move on, they must also let go – a notion which eventually comes to all of those who have lost loved ones at some point in their lives.

That's the bitter.

For the sweet, it's as Robin says: “The most Christmassy feeling in the world is when you give somebody a gift. A gift you know they will always remember.”

And Ghosts really is one of those you'll remember, and one of those you'll periodically come back to and enjoy their company for a while before making another fond farewell.

A gift we'll always remember.