Ghostwatch

Ghostwatch is a British supernatural horror pseudo-documentary television film, first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992. Written by Stephen Volk, and directed by Lesley Manning, the drama was produced for the BBC anthology series Screen One by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten and Derek Nelson. Although filmed several months in advance, the narrative was presented as live television. During and following its first and only UK television broadcast, the programme attracted considerable controversy, with the BBC receiving around 30,000 calls from distressed and angry viewers. Its reception has been compared to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Ghostwatch has never been repeated on UK television. It has been repeated internationally, on stations such as the Canadian digital channel Scream for Halloween 2004, and the Belgian channel Canvas in 2008. It became available on the American streaming video service Shudder in 2017, and it was made available on the Internet Archive the same year. There have been three UK home video releases. In 2002, the British Film Institute released a 10th Anniversary edition on VHS and DVD, and 101 Films issued a DVD release in 2011 and a 30th Anniversary Blu-ray release in 2022. In 2016, the BBC Store made the film available as part of the Frightmares collection, marking Halloween. A retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains, based on the film's lasting impact, was released on DVD in 2013 (having been in production between 2007 and 2012), featuring interviews with many of the original cast and crew. It too was made available as part of the BBC Store Frightmares collection, and shortly after release, the BFI Mediatheque.