#bbc ghosts maddocks

[5691youheardwrong]

The real tragedy of ghosts is that there will never be something that I celebrate more than maddocks and him saying he's from Sheffield. That was the peak of ghosts for me

[dislocated-thumbs]

i love maddocks he is the guy of all time!! i swear his name is a reference to yonderland. debbie maddox. maddocks. same thing

[m0ose-idiot]

The little ones were so excited to find another ghost living in the adjacent field! Unfortunately Maddocks just found them all profoundly, profoundly annoying, bless him 👻🤍🦡

[grinchwrapsupreme]

the key ingredient to the ghosts in BBC Ghosts is that no one can fucking stand them

[haventacluewhatimdoing]

This was almost two months ago now, but my friends and I went to West Horsley place dressed as some of the ghosts!

(Maddocks, Julian, Thomas, Pat)

[natequarter]

you know you've fucked up when a dead man thinks you're worse than the badgers which slowly consumed his corpse

[archerygun]

Wowee. This is a bit of an emotional one. Just warning you now.

I’ve been watching Ghosts pretty much since it came out. My dad surprised me with the first episode and refused to let me know what we were watching until I saw Ben Willbond’s face and was like “HOLD ON.”

(Nobody asked, but my favourite has always been the Captain because I’ve been obsessed with the Second World War since I was 7. My dad’s favourite is Robin, my mum’s is Kitty and my sister likes Pat).

It wasn’t niche then by any stretch of it. It’s always been popular, but it certainly wasn’t something your teachers plus the whole internet were cracking out the good wine for. (I proceeded to annoy everyone in my life by talking about it, little did they know that 3 years later they’d become equally obsessed by it).

And that doesn’t sound too special, but like. When Ghosts came out, I was in Primary School. Now I’m sitting my GCSEs. That’s fucking insane. Not even mentioning how it singlehandedly carried me through lockdown when I was dealing with a bigger workload than ever (online school just means strictish parents get to cross over into actually strict) and only had one friend to communicate with.

The first (and last) time I read proper fanfiction was when I was like 12 and looking through the Ghosts fandom because I was having a really, really bad time with paranoia and couldn’t sleep.

When we had our Year 10 mocks, my friend showed up half an hour late to our Chemistry exam after doing zero revision because she was bingewatching every episode of Ghosts to cope with exams. She gave me a rose for valentine’s this year with “I’m from Yorkshire mate, I’m practically made of tea.” on it. Her Yearbook quote is gonna be “I’m going to drown myself in the lake! I mean it!”

My Media Studies teacher found out I watched the show and started enthusiastically taking me through all of her theories about it before Season 4 came out. (She’s like sixty and her favourite show is Line of Duty by the way). Before Season 5 came out I asked her how she felt and she gave me a very excited “We’re getting out the good wine!!!”

So. My grandad died in 2022. Just before Christmas. They thought he’d make it to celebrate Christmas with us, but they’d overestimated. He had lung cancer, caused by working around asbestos as an industrial electrician. I genuinely cannot describe how much of a wonderful man he was. He was the best person I ever met, and more of a second dad than a grandad.

The last thing my grandad watched with us (we put a lot of importance on watching things as a family, at least in my family. Not sure if this is the same for everyone) was an episode of Ghosts. We thought it would be a laugh, because his end of the family are all from Sheffield and they’d introduced Maddocks. He was very out of it, and on an oxygen drip. He couldn’t really pay attention but he insisted on trying because he wanted to make us happy.

He died that week, on the day we had to leave. We were in the house when he started failing and all we could do was drive back down to London.

(Ghosts actually got a shoutout in the funeral. We’re a family with a sense of humour, and my grandad was the kind of man that results in a family debate about whether Ça Plane Pour Moi is an appropriate song for a funeral).

The Christmas episode that year broke me. In a good way. When they played Pat’s video tapes, I saw every photo of my dad’s family in the eighties in Yorkshire. It can’t be too hard to capture the energy, I’m sure, but I’ll tell you this. There wasn’t a dry bloody eye in the sitting room. My aunt even got their Christmas pictures out afterwards. My Sheffield family saw their childhoods on the screen and my London family saw my grandad.

It’s funny how things can end up being an accidental allegory or feel cosmically intentional.

I’m not saying this for pity, or to one-up anyone about my connection to the show. I just feel like if I don’t describe every detail, Ghosts’ impact on my life is going to be understated. And I’m more than happy that it will impact so many more people.

So, yeah. Thank you, Ghosts. I can’t think of a single piece of other media that’s been as impactful on my life. Thank you for being made with care and love and attention to detail and terminal levels of Britishness. Thank you for dealing with death and grief and healing in an entertaining way.

Thank you. For everything.

[justice4ghigeon]

Maddocks and the Ghigeon are best friends you can't prove they aren't

[pointnumbersixteen]

“Nine hours to bleed out. Two weeks to find the corpse. I had to watch myself being eaten. Slowly. By badgers.” 

[moonahsrobin]

We need more Maddocks appreciation

[5691youheardwrong]

12 Days Of Thanktival 2022 - Chapter 3 - 5691YouHeardWrong - Ghosts (TV 2019) [Archive of Our Own]

[historicalsnail]

Maddocks: Well, if I must, sir.

Captain: Let's dispense with the formalities. Please, call me Captain.

Maddocks: Captain, sir?

Julian: If anything that's more formal.

Captain: I thought you'd left!?

[m0ose-idiot]

There's another ghost! There's been a dead guy over the hedge all this time!

I introduced him to all the others and they hung out for a bit but then he took himself off somewhere and I haven't seen him in ages 🤷‍♂️👻🤍

Just when I thought I'd finished with Ghosts characters and was preparing to simmer down, @crow-bee23 suggested Maddocks. The gore is all off screen, so this is my interpretation of what purple tendons, the tibia and bone marrow would look like for an amigurumi lad. Who knows what an early 20th century badger trap looks like, not me, blame Google if that bit's wrong 🤪

[616skydalorian]

i love the idea that Maddocks is permanently low energy due to he died because of blood loss. he's me for real

[natequarter]

the plague ghosts, upon kitty's death: ugh, not another noble!

kitty, upon meeting them: oh, you've got the plague! how delightful - your sores are so fascinating. can we be friends?

[imdayyydreaming]

can we consider the captain x maddocks? please? i KNOW he finds all the ghosts but robin annoying, and they all think he moved on, but still. 

what would they talk about? i don’t know. would they even get along? i don’t know. but... cap immediately told this man his name. that sells me on it.

 them falling in love and never being able to reach each other because of the property line. tragic, i love it.