From L-R: Adam, Marley, Michael, and Vicar
Marley's Ghosts is a sitcom written by Daniel Peacock that aired for two series from 2015 to 2016 on GOLD. It focuses on Marley Wise (Sarah Alexander), a magistrate who feels unhappy in her marriage to Adam (John Hannah), to the point of cheating on him with a fellow magistrate named Michael Walton. However, things get complicated, firstly through the deaths of both Adam and Michael (through choking to death on a chicken bone and getting involved in a car accident respectively), then through the fact that Marley finds out that she can see Adam and Michael's ghosts, and then by the fact that the local Vicar, who had been driving the car involved in Michael's fatal car accident, also dies and becomes a ghost, leading to Marley having to deal with three quite annoying spirits.
Tropes in this series:
- Accidental Murder: Adam's shoddily produced lamp made back when he was eight manages to kill two people through pure accident.
- Away in a Manger: Marley ends up giving birth on Christmas Day during a Nativity Play at the local Church, with her arriving at the Church framed similarly to Mary showing up at the stable. Played With in that Marley ends up giving birth at the hospital, although the agreement she came to with Reverend Rose to get her there meant that the baby ends up playing Jesus at the next play.
- Babies Ever After: The final episode ends with Marley giving birth to a child.
- Big "NO!": Michael's response to finding himself dead, shouting a loud "Noooooo!".
- Birthday Episode: "Carley" is set over the Vicar's birthday. The Vicar of course is not pleased with the event, as it means that she can't blow out any candles or eat cake on account of being a ghost.
- British Brevity: Only 9 episodes were ever made, with one series consisting of 3 episodes and the other being made up of 6.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Mia, introduced in "Fit", is a rebellious 16-year-old teenager, going behind her mother Abby's back to go to nightclubs and talking back at Marley for not allowing her to wear high heels.
- Christmas Episode: The final episode, "Christmas", starts with Marley practicing for the Christmas Choir during Summer and ends with her being involved in an Away in a Manger style birth during Christmas.
- Comforting the Widow: Michael makes a move towards Marley way too quickly. As in "at the funeral of her husband" quickly. Granted, he does realize his error.
- Covers Always Lie: Promotional materials for the show depict the ghosts with an Undeathly Pallor. In the actual series, they have the same skin tone as the living.
- Dark Secret: Michael is revealed to have a dark secret in "Dead Man's Chest", trying to apologise to a woman and being unwilling to reveal the truth to the other as he believes himself to have done a terrible thing. Adam and the Vicar find that the truth lies in a chest and a photo of him with the woman in a wedding dress. Michael eventually reveals that it's because he walked out on their marriage, and he never apologized to the woman.
- Dead All Along:
- After the Vicar runs over Michael, she sustains a head injury, although some of the other characters insist that she'll survive. It's whilst Marley is visiting the Vicar at the hospital that two doctors push the cubicle curtains behind her to reveal the Vicar's corpse, showing that the Vicar that Marley had been talking to is now also a ghost.
- Near the end of "The Art Teacher", Marley falls in love with an art teacher called Mr. Dains. After inquiring if Mia, her niece and one of the students under Dains, had shown him the piece, Mia tells Marley that Dains had died the previous year, revealing that Marley had fallen in love with another ghost.
- Dead Sparks: Marley feels this way regarding her marriage to Adam - to her, the man she had once married has long gone, and she considers Adam to have become a stranger to her now. The fact that Adam seems ignorant of Marley's advances, as well as drunkenly walking into one of her hearings, might have something to do with this. It's not hard to imagine why she would have an affair with Michael then, who questions outright why she chooses to remain with him.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Vicar presumably has an actual name, but it's not used either by her or anyone else.
- Faint in Shock: Marley has this response to seeing the spirits of both Adam and Michael is to faint, although in both cases, this is preceeded by a few seconds of her thinking that she's going to faint before not doing so... before then fainting anyway.
- Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: Adam is the Foolish to Marley's Responsible, with Adam being so foolish that he can't remember Marley's birthday and is seen by Marley as being barely capable of looking after a child, and with Marley holding a steady job as a magistrate and being the Only Sane Woman.
- Friendly Ghost: They might be annoying, but for the most part, Adam, the Vicar, and Michael are harmless as spirits.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main cast consists of two women (Marley and the Vicar) and two men (Michael and Adam).
- Healthy in Heaven: "Blind Sided" features a blind person called Ryan, who gains the ability to see after his death by exploding lamp and reappearance as a ghost.
- Hopeless Suitor: In Episode 3, the Vicar falls in love with an attractive biker named Gary, although this attraction is hindered by the fact that the Biker is unable to see her and is alive whereas the Vicar is not.
- Hypocrite: In "Carly", Marley gets furious over Adam and Carly's relationship, fearing that it will end with Adam cheating on Marley with Carly. This in spite of the fact that she had cheated on Adam herself with Michael.
- Hypocritical Humour: In "Carly", right after the Vicar talks about how she used to talk to an imaginary friend, she proudly proclaims that as she's now an adult, she doesn't need to talk to imaginary people. Then she tells the other that she needs to go off to talk to Jesus.
- Imaginary Friend: The main focus of "Carly" is Marley finding out that what she assumed was an imaginary friend was in fact a ghost, but the other ghosts also mention having imaginary friends, with the Vicar having had one named Lucy and Michael making up one called Tyrone.
- I See Dead People:
- The premise of the series is that Marley sees the spirits of Michael, Adam, and the Vicar, with no one else seeing them. Episode 2 however has Marley discovering an article featuring Michael and Adam being identified by a young neighbourhood child beside a group of art thieves they had been following for the episode, confirming that the ghosts are not a figment of Marley's imagination and that she hasn't gone insane. Later episodes feature her being able to see other ghosts beyond the core three, such as Beth during her Near-Death Clairvoyance in Episode 3, and Ryan and his brother in "Blind Sided".
- Episode 2 features an exorcist coming over to get rid of the ghosts. Interestingly, whilst she can't see Marley's ghosts, she is capable of talking to a ghost called Isabelle, which no one else, including Marley, is capable of seeing. Although it is also implied that she is a Phony Psychic.
- I Was Quite a Looker:
- Adam apparently according to Episode 3 - upon seeing a photo of his younger self, everyone understands how such an unattractive-looking guy like him could end up scoring with such an attractive woman as the mother of his apparent daughter Beth.
- Marley also view herself as this in "Dead Man's Chest", considering an old photo of her found in a box to be very flattering compared to herself now.
- Loving Details: Played for Laughs with Marley's lover Michael, as whilst Marley's husband Adam can't even remember her birthday, Michael can remember things as specific as her shoe size and where she lost her virginity.
- Luke, You Are My Father: The plot of Episode 3 features Adam discovering that Beth, a woman who has been given his heart, is in fact his daughter. Beth's mother explains that as he was just some guy she met in the toilet at a party, she didn't find it neccessary to reveal Beth's existence to Adam.
- Meaningful Name: Marley shares a name with the ghostly Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol - fitting, considering her connection with the undead through her ability to see dead people. She also has the surname of "Wise", fitting in with her role as the Only Sane Man amongst the ghosts and in her holding a job as a Magistrate.
- Near-Death Clairvoyance: In Episode 3, Beth has a heart attack, allowing her to briefly remain as a ghost whilst paramedics work to revive her body and giving her the opportunity to talk to her recently deceased father Adam. Adam is successful in his pleas with Beth to return to her body and is able to dispense helpful "Dad Advice" before she goes.
- No Title: None of the 3 episodes included as part of Series 1 have any titles. Not the case with Series 2, all 6 episodes of which have titles.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: "Carly" centers around Marley realizing that what she assumed was just an imaginary friend was in fact an early manifestation of her ability to see ghosts.
- Parting-Words Regret: In "Dead Man's Chest", Michael reveals that the last time he saw his wife, he walked out on her, and never got the chance to apologize to her before his death. Marley thankfully is able to relay his apology to the wife by framing it as Michael's last words... only for said wife to not only brush off the apology, but to reveal that she had been cheating on Michael without his knowledge.
- Plastic Bitch: Beth's mother in Episode 3, who verbally abuses her daughter, is only interested in Adam for potential money, and insults the appearances of both Marley and one of the neighbours. She has also had a lot of plastic surgery, to the point that the others agree that it's possible to have too much surgery done upon seeing a photo of her online.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The main plot of the series is triggered by the deaths of both Michael, Adam, and the Vicar, with Marley discovering that she can see their spirits.
- Running Over the Plot: Michael and the Vicar's role as being two of the ghosts which Marley can see starts when Michael is run over by the Vicar, killing the both of them.
- Taped-Over Turmoil: Adam is not pleased to hear in "Carly" that the footage of his and Marley's wedding had been accidentally taped over by Marley with footage of a holiday in Spain involving her and her affair Michael.
- Toilet Humour: After an entire episode focused on Michael wanting his donated organs used, he discovers that one of them was used... in rectal reconstruction surgery. Adam at least finds it hilarious.
- Turned Off By The Jerkass: In "The Art Teacher", Marley's short-lived romance with an art teacher falls apart when he brushes off Marley's concerns about her sobbing niece Mia (whose boyfriend isn't talking to her, has a mother who is off drinking, and whose painting didn't succeed as well as she hoped it would have been), and instead insists on kicking Mia out so that they can be romantic
- Unable to Cry: The major plot of "Blind Sided" is of Marley realizing that she is unable to cry, and her worrying about what this means for her personality-wise. Luckily, the apparent disappearances of the ghosts cause her to cry, both for them and, after they reappear, every single trauma, no matter how minor, she had in her life.
- The Vicar: Part of the group of ghosts is the Vicar, who has her heart in the right place, but tends to misremember Bible stories and end up making up lines.
- Who's Your Daddy?: In "Christmas", Marley finds out she's pregnant, but she isn't sure whether the father is Michael or Adam. In the end, she receives a DNA test receiving the truth. However, both she and the ghosts decide to not open the letter after all and instead burn it.
- With a Foot on the Bus: In "Blind Sided", the ghosts seemingly vanish from Marley's life, believing that Marley sees them as a burden and joining Ryan on his travels across the world. It isn't until Marley pulls up a photo album and begins to cry that the ghosts reveal themselves again, having decided to not go after all.
