Beetlejuice Meets Schitt’s Creek In Paramount+’s 97% RT Horror-Comedy Masterpiece

Published Jul 25, 2026, 9:15 AM EDT After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers. ​ Paramount+ harbors countless hidden gems, but foremost among them is a CBS sitcom that puts the “ha” in haunted. Blending the eccentric premise of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice with the warm, family-focused comedy of Schitt’s Creek, this underappreciated series delivers consistent laughs across its five seasons. The tale of a haunted manor house inherited by a young married couple unaware of its undead occupants, Ghosts is the American remake of an acclaimed British sitcom with the same name. Its story has also managed to win the hearts of stateside viewers and critics alike, not least thanks to the charming lead performances of Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar. Just as Schitt’s Creek is a sitcom fans can rewatch over and over again, Ghosts is a cozy TV comedy that never gets old. The show’s offbeat humor playfully subverts its macabre premise, while entertaining us with an array of wonderfully inventive supporting characters from various different historical eras. Every bit as quirky and quick-witted as Beetlejuice at its best, and full of wholesome good cheer in a way few other contemporary comedy series manage to achieve without ever seeming saccharine, Ghosts should be counted among the most underrated sitcoms of the 2020s. It’s a rare example of television that’s as much fun as it is sidesplittingly funny. Paramount+ Horror Comedy Ghosts Is An Underappreciated Masterpiece MovieStillsDB Although it takes its lead from a British forerunner, the CBS version of Ghosts is the one every sitcom fan should watch. The show’s hilarious combination of living protagonists playing it straight and a colorful ensemble of haunting spirits, with a full spectrum of personalities and backstories between them, inevitably produces an endless stream of rapidfire gags. When you somehow bring together a Viking prone to violence, a gay Continental Army officer, a drug-addled lady of the manor, an Italian scout leader, a Spanish hippie, and a womanizing New York stockbroker, it’s bound to make for some good stories. At the same time, the show’s protagonists serve up their own fair share of laughs, too. The premise for Ghosts might have been brought to the screen countless times before in different guises, but this sitcom turns it into something that viewers could keep watching until eternity. That is, if they don’t die laughing first. As much as it’s received rave reviews and continues to attract large audiences on CBS, Ghosts tends to be forgotten about when award season comes around, or when it’s time to compile best-of lists. The series has scarcely put a foot wrong in five years, and deserves far more visibility on Paramount+. Ghosts Feels Like Beetlejuice Crossed With Schitt’s Creek CBS via MovieStillsDB More than any other TV show, Ghosts resembles the beloved horror comedy movie Beetlejuice in its idiosyncratic approach to a haunted house premise, as well as its anarchic sense of humor. Like Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz, the sitcom’s protagonist Sam Arondekar has a special ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Just as Lydia’s acquaintances from the afterlife get her in all sorts of trouble, the ghoulish ensemble in Ghosts give Sam and husband Jay plenty of headaches, in addition to all the hilarity they provide. At the same time, the couple’s cohabitants quickly become like family for them, much as the Maitlands do for Lydia in Beetlejuice. It’s only fitting that an all-time great horror comedy considered one of the best haunted house movies ever made serves as the key inspiration for the Ghosts sitcom franchise on both sides of the Atlantic. But the US iteration of the TV show is also very similar in tone to its fellow fish-out-of-water family comedy Schitt’s Creek. Fans of the Rose family’s story will instantly warm to the dynamic between the Arondekars and their ghostly companions. It’s high time that Ghosts got the industry recognition that was afforded to Schitt’s Creek by the end of its six-season run. The Paramount+ sitcom will be back with a sixth installment of its own in the first months of 2027. Release Date October 7, 2021 Network CBS Directors Christine Gernon, Jaime Eliezer Karas, Katie Locke O'Brien, Nick Wong, Jude Weng, Pete Chatmon, Richie Keen, Alex Hardcastle, Kimmy Gatewood, Matthew A. Cherry, Cortney Carrillo Cast Rose McIver Samantha Arondekar Utkarsh Ambudkar Jay Arondekar