Ghostwriter (TV series)


Ghostwriter is an American children's mystery television series created by Liz Nealon and produced by the Children's Television Workshop and BBC Television. It began airing on PBS on October 4, 1992, and the final episode aired on February 12, 1995. The series revolves around a circle of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of young detectives with the help of a ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with the kids only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. The series was filmed on location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Overview

The series was designed to teach reading and writing skills to elementary and middle school children. Each mystery was presented as a case, covering four 30 minute episodes ; children were encouraged to follow each mystery, and use the reading and writing clues given to attempt to solve them just as the Ghostwriter team does in the TV series.
Ghostwriter was critically acclaimed and honored for presenting a realistic, racially diverse world in its two-hour mystery stories. By the end of its third season, Ghostwriter ranked in the top five of all children's shows on American television. Ghostwriter has been broadcast in 24 countries worldwide, and generated a number of foreign-language adaptations, including a dubbed over version on Discovery Kids Latin America marketed as Fantasma Escritor.
Despite its popularity, the program was abruptly canceled after the third season due to inadequate funding. The original series was rerun from 1995 to 1999 on PBS. The UPN Kids block on UPN also ran reruns for a short time in 1997. Then, in 1999, it was syndicated on ABC for a short time. Later that year it moved to the network Noggin and The N, where it aired until 2003.

Episodes

Cast

Created as an integrated, branded, multi-media project, the Ghostwriter brand included magazines and teacher's guides, software, home video, games/licensed product, and other outreach materials that reached over a million children each month. There were many Ghostwriter novels released, both novelizations of the TV episodes and new stories. They were released by Bantam Books.

VHS releases

During the mid-1990s Ghostwriter was released on VHS by two different companies, which were GPN and Republic Pictures. They have the entire series except for the last two cases. These videos are in the original format, with each case divided into four or five episodes. Republic Pictures released only three cases: "Ghost Story", "Who Burned Mr. Brinker's Store?", and "Into the Comics". In Republic Pictures' version, the episodes for each case were edited together into a feature-length film.

DVD releases

In February 2010, it was announced that Season 1 of Ghostwriter would be released on DVD by Shout! Factory. The five-disc set, running 870 minutes long, was released on June 8, 2010. Supplements are a trivia game and a casebook. The entire series except for the last two story arcs were also released by GPN.
DVD nameEp #Release dateSpecial Features
Season One34June 8, 2010Ghostwriter Trivia Game, Ghostwriter Casebook
Season Two28TBA
Season Three12TBA

Awards and nominations

In 1997, CBS aired a new version of the series, The New Ghostwriter Mysteries, but it was canceled after one season due to low ratings. The new series had little in common with the original, changing Ghostwriter's on-screen appearance, introducing entirely new characters, and getting rid of the serial format of the original series. The series was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and featured a new team of three kids: Camella Gorik, Emilie Robeson, and Henry "Strick" Strickland. Ghostwriter only had two colors, which were silver and gold.

Ghostwriter's identity

Ghostwriter producer and writer Kermit Frazier revealed in a 2010 interview that Ghostwriter was the ghost of a runaway slave during the American Civil War. He taught other slaves how to read and write and was killed by slave catchers and their dogs. His soul was kept in the book that Jamal first discovered in the pilot episode, and when Jamal opened the book he was freed.

Radio series

In the summer of 2006, BBC School Radio produced a radio series of Ghostwriter for primary school students. Character names from the TV series were retained, though voiced by new children. Music and the theme song were also kept, and a new musical jingle for children to recognize Ghostwriter's appearances was created by Sesame Workshop.

Reboot

In September 2019, it was reported that a Ghostwriter reboot would air on Apple TV+, premiering on November 1, 2019. The series is currently nominated for eight Daytime Emmy Awards.

Episodes

Season 1 (2019)