Ghostwriter (1992 TV series)

Ghostwriter is a children's mystery television series created by Liz Nealon and produced by Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) and BBC Television. The series revolves around a multiethnic group of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of youth detectives with the help of a ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with children only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences.[2] The series was filmed on location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It began airing on PBS on October 4, 1992, and the last episode aired on February 12, 1995. It reran on Noggin, a channel co-founded by the Children's Television Workshop, from 1999 to 2003.

This article is about the American television series that aired from 1992–1995. For the 2019 television series, see Ghostwriter (2019 TV series). For television series with similar titles, see Ghostwriter (disambiguation).

Ghostwriter
Genre
Created byLiz Nealon
Starring
  • Todd Alexander Cohen
  • Blaze Berdahl
  • David López
  • Marcella Lowery
  • Mayteana Morales
  • Tram-Anh Tran
  • William Hernandez
  • Melissa González
  • Lateaka Vinson
  • Sheldon Turnipseed
Composers
  • Gail "Sky" King
  • Peter Wetzler
Country of origin
  • United States
  • United Kingdom (seasons 1-2)
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons3
No. of episodes74 (18 story arcs, with four episodes in each arc, except 1 and 5, which have five episodes) (list of episodes)
Production
ProducerMiranda Barry
Production locationsBrooklyn, New York
Running time30 minutes
Production companies
Release
Original network
Original releaseOctober 4, 1992 (1992-10-04) –
February 12, 1995 (1995-02-12)
Related

Overview

The series is designed to teach reading and writing skills to schoolchildren. Each mystery is presented as a case, covering four 30-minute episodes (except for the first and fifth story arc, where there are five 30 minute episodes); children are encouraged to follow each mystery and use the reading and writing clues given to attempt to solve them just as the Ghostwriter team does.[3]

Episodes
Main article: List of Ghostwriter episodes
SeasonEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast aired
134October 4, 1992May 16, 1993
228September 12, 1993April 24, 1994
SpecialSeptember 18, 1994 (1994-09-18)
312September 25, 1994February 12, 1995

Cast
Main article: List of Ghostwriter characters
  • Sheldon Turnipseed as Jamal Jenkins
  • Blaze Berdahl as Lenni Frazier
  • David López as Alex Fernández
  • Mayteana Morales as Gaby Fernández (1992–1995)
  • Tram-Anh Tran as Tina Nguyen
  • Todd Alexander Cohen as Rob Baker (1992–1993)
  • William Hernandez as Héctor Carrero (1993–1995)
  • Lateaka Vinson as Casey Austin (1994–1995)
  • Marcella Lowery as CeCe Jenkins

Critics and merchandise

Ghostwriter was critically acclaimed and honored for presenting a realistic, ethnically diverse world in its two-hour mystery stories.[4] By the end of its third season, Ghostwriter ranked in the top five of all children's shows on American television.

Created as an integrated, branded, multi-media project, the Ghostwriter brand included magazines and teacher's guides, software (Microsoft), 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.

Noggin's website featured exclusive casebook files based on the show.[5]

Broadcast and home release

Ghostwriter has been broadcast in 24 countries worldwide, and generated a number of foreign-language adaptations, including a dubbed over version on Discovery Kids in Latin America marketed as Fantasma Escritor.

Despite its popularity, the program was abruptly canceled after the third season due to inadequate funding after the BBC pulled out of co-producing the show. The original series was rerun from 1995 to 1999 on PBS. From 1999 to 2003, it aired on the Noggin cable network, which was jointly founded by the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) with MTV Networks. The show's revival The New Ghostwriter Mysteries also aired on Noggin as part of its nighttime programming blocks, The Hubbub[6] and The N.

VHS releases

During the mid-1990s, Ghostwriter was released on VHS by Republic Pictures Home Video. The company released "Ghost Story", "Who Burned Mr. Brinker's Store?", and "Into the Comics" with their respective story-arc episodes edited together into a feature-length format.

DVD releases
Ghostwriter: Season One DVD cover art.

In February 2010, it was announced that Season 1 of Ghostwriter would be released on DVD by Shout! Factory. The 5-disc set, running 870 minutes long, was released on June 8, 2010. Supplements are a trivia game and a casebook.[7][8] The entire series except for the last two story arcs were also released by GPN.[9]

DVD nameEp #Release dateSpecial Features
Season One34June 8, 2010Ghostwriter Trivia Game, Ghostwriter Casebook
Season Two28TBA
Season Three12TBA

Awards and nominations
  • Writers Guild of America, United States, 1995
    • Won, WGA Award (TV) for Children's Script—Carin Greenberg Baker, for "Don't Stop The Music".
  • Young Artist Awards, 1993
    • Nominated, Outstanding Performers in a Children's Program: Todd Alexander, Blaze Berdahl, David López, Mayteana Morales, Tram-Anh Tran, Sheldon Turnipseed

The New Ghostwriter Mysteries

In 1997, CBS aired a new version of the series, The New Ghostwriter Mysteries,[10] as part of their educational Think CBS Kids block, 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.[11] The series was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and featured a new team of three kids: Camella Gorik (Charlotte Sullivan), Emilie Robeson (Erica Luttrell), and Henry "Strick" Strickland (Kristian Ayre). 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 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 spirit was kept in the book that Jamal discovers and opens in the pilot episode, freeing the ghost.[12]

Radio series

In summer 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 arranged jingle for children to recognize Ghostwriter's appearances was created by Sesame Workshop.

Revival
Main article: Ghostwriter (2019 TV series)

In September 2019, it was reported that a Ghostwriter revival would air on Apple TV+. The series premiered on November 1, 2019.[13] The series was nominated for eight Daytime Emmy Awards.[14]

A spin-off, Ghostwriter: Beyond the Page, premiered on April 1, 2021.[15]

References
  1. Heffley, Lynne (October 3, 1992). "Words Add Substance to 'Ghostwriter'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
  2. Bernstein, Sharon (September 12, 1992). "Fox to Premiere PBS' 'Ghostwriter'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
  3. Bernstein, Sharon (May 17, 1991). "Public TV: 'Ghostwriter' targets third- and fourth-graders, 40% of whom are said to lack basic reading skills. The series will debut in 1992". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 7, 2012. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
  4. "Ghostwriter Review | TV Reviews and News". EW.com. January 15, 1993. Archived from the original on October 25, 2008. Retrieved March 12, 2014.
  5. Nick Iuppa (September 7, 2001). Interactive Design for New Media and the Web. CRC Press. pp. 248–249. ISBN 978-1-136-13405-0. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
  6. Umstead, R. Thomas (June 11, 2001). "Noggin Adds Interactive Series". Multichannel News. Archived from the original on September 25, 2020.
  7. "Ghostwriter: Season One : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". Dvdtalk.com. June 8, 2010. Archived from the original on June 12, 2010. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
  8. "Ghostwriter Typed Up – IGN". Dvd.ign.com. April 22, 2010. Archived from the original on September 16, 2012. Retrieved March 16, 2014.
  9. "Destination Education, Inc - Search". Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
  10. King, Susan (August 31, 1997). "Educating and Entertaining". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved March 12, 2014.
  11. King, Susan (August 31, 1997). "Educating and Entertaining". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 12, 2014. Retrieved March 12, 2014.
  12. Honan, Katie (May 6, 2010). "'Ghostwriter' Revisits Fort Greene Past". The New York Times. The Local (blog). Archived from the original on April 11, 2013. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  13. Denise Petski (September 10, 2019). "'Ghostwriter': Reboot Of 1990s Kids Series Set At Apple TV+". Deadline. Archived from the original on September 11, 2019. Retrieved September 13, 2019.
  14. "Emmy Noms for Sesame, Muppet Babies, & More! Oh My! | Muppet Fans Who Grew up - Tough Pigs Muppet Fans Who Grew up – Tough Pigs". May 21, 2020. Archived from the original on November 16, 2020. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  15. Meaghan Darwish (March 5, 2021). "Apple TV+ Spring Shows to Include 'It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown' and a 'Ghostwriter' Spinoff". TV Insider. Retrieved May 7, 2021.
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