Ghostwriter

"Ghostwriter" fans will always remember the team of six kids who ran around Brooklyn cracking codes and solving mysteries. Some people have teased the show for its early 90's look of colorful outfits, trendy headgear, mild rap music, and brief introduction to the internet.

While the Ghostwriter team worked on solving mysteries, they also learned about environmentalism, drug abuse, violence, war remembrance, and family feuds.

So who IS Ghostwriter? In the pilot episode, a ghost suddenly pops out of a book in the basement of Jamal Jenkins. He's depicted as a bubble that floats around the screen before diving into books or a computer. Ghostwriter cannot hear or talk. It takes Jamal and his friend Lenni Frazer a few tries until they realize he can only communicate through words.

One of the hardest challenges for "Ghostwriter" was addressing difficult topics such as violence and drugs in a realistic environment. How do you do that on a PBS kid-oriented show? Through creative stories and compelling characters. And to do it through writing. As the show progressed, the characters faced peer pressure and social challenges.In "What's Up with Alex", Alex starts to shirk his responsibilities at home and is tempted to try marijuana because his "cool" friend Kevin uses it. The whole Ghostwriter team is concerned but thanks to their honesty with Alex, he turns down Kevin's offer and helps the team crack a crime ring.

This show is a nostalgia trip that is well worth taking.

Ghostwriter was this interesting show aimed for the juvenile trade to encourage folks to read. That's something you have to encourage at a young age. It was shot in and the episodes were located in some familiar areas of New York City and watching the show it all looked quite familiar to me.

Just who or what was Ghostwriter. He was this other worldly being who could only and who chose to only communicate with a select group of adolescents by writing wherever, be it on a computer or on a bathroom wall. The kids got involved in solving a mystery and their method was to read Ghostwriter's clues and keep a case notebook of what they learned. Eventually they put things together.

I remember one episode where Ghostwriter brought up some painful memories for people in Brooklyn. He had them go to Sullivan Place because an old ballpark was located there and that had something to do with the mystery. Kids their age in the 1990s would have no memories of Ebbetts Field, but they did the required research to learn. A show that teaches how to research is a valuable thing indeed.

I wish it were still running.

"Ghostwriter" was a wonderful escape from reality and into the brain-teasing and fascinating lives of a team of young adults. The teenagers were chosen by a friendly spirit (Ghostwriter) who could only communicate through writing. The original team, (starting out with only two members and broadening into about seven to eight members) is chosen to explore the many mysteries, cheats, and other oddities in their home town Brooklyn, NY. The original "Ghostwriter" TV series was a show like no other and captured the attention of many viewers anywhere. There will never be another show like it, may its memory live on in the minds of its faithful viewers for eternity.

"Ghostwriter" was a show that was very original, very cool to watch, and began and ended well ahead of its time. It's a great piece of '90's nostalgia, not to mention a terrifically entertaining show. It was admittedly not well acted at times, and at other times had very unrealistic scenarios (excluding the appearance of a ghost that takes words and writes with them), but the show had so many strengths to make up for those weaknesses.

First of all, the cast of kids they had was amazing. Casting Sheldon Turnipseed as Jamal Jenkins was perhaps the best thing the producers of the series had ever done. Judging from this early piece of acting, it is absolutely surprising that Turnipseed has ended up on the "Where Are They Now?" list and has since appeared to drop off the face of the planet. He was a great leading character, not to mention an outstanding positive black role model. If Turnipseed ever decided to crawl out from the rock he has been hiding under for the last thirteen years or so and try acting again, he could reach the same A-list status as Denzel Washington or Jamie Foxx.

Blaze Berdahl was also very good as Lenni Frazier, even though her hip hop songs probably can't stand the test of time. She was just a very fun and outgoing character, and someone I would have loved to have been friends with in grade school or junior high and beyond.

Also, Berdahl's character was the token white character (save Rob, the short-lived but equally appealing character played by Todd Alexander) in a show that dared to be more diverse than many shows before or even since. In any other show made for the tween audience even today, there's usually one white girl, her white friend with different color hair, and her other black friend who has the same hair style and acts exactly the same. If the show were predominantly black, the scenario would be exactly the same.

But having a show with this diverse a cast, other shows would be accused of being too preachy. At no point in my watching this show as a youth, or even catching snippets as an adult, did I feel that a message about the human race was constantly being shoved in my face. Rather, I thought the show reflected some great insight as to the many faces of middle class NYC youth. Furthermore, the characters were developed so well that they felt less like bland stereotypes and more like actual human beings that you could possibly visit in New York. It actually made me want to live in New York as a youth, too.

Although it was a PBS show designed for kids, I'm not exactly sure even today what the show was trying to teach. This fact could be a testament to the show's ability to make entertaining stories without being known strictly as an educational show. If I were to make a guess, I would say that the show's intent was probably to teach about the importance of reading and writing. Looking back, the show actually made me want to write a lot more, and I remember wishing my penmanship was as neat as the show's characters' was. The show was also perhaps the first to frequent the use of computers, and to even talk about the World Wide Web. Of course, this was in the days where modems were bought separately from computers, and dial-up was the only way to connect. Still, there weren't even a lot of mainstream shows at the time who made major plot points about the new Information Superhighway, and that eventually became very powerful stuff.

I remember "Ghostwriter" ended abruptly, still with a legion of followers. It's a shame that the show's demise was based solely on lack of funding (as far as I know), because it remains one of the most original television shows ever aired. This show has been off the air for over a decade, and has seldom been aired in syndication. It hopefully will get the DVD release it properly deserves, and maybe we'll even find out whatever happened to Sheldon Turnipseed.

Back when Ghostwriter was on PBS, I never missed an episode, and was disappointed when it went off the air. Now when I catch it on Nickelodeon and Noggin (and educational children's channel), the show is just as good as I remember it. The best thing about Ghostwriter was that it never insulted the intelligence of its viewers, even though its targeted viewing audience was about 7 to 12 years old. Each mystery took four episodes to complete, and the plot was always complex and interesting enough to justify the continuations. It seemed like the writers never cut corners just because this was a children's show. Another great thing about the show was its setting in New York City. It was obvious that the show wasn't shot on some fake urban soundstage in Hollywood. The characters run around the city in an area called Fort Greene, and the community is portrayed in a warm and authentic way. A huge credit to the show was its great young cast. Even though their acting skills weren't great, they each managed to adhere a strong personality to the characters.

Special props go to Joey Shea, who was hilarious as Calvin Ferguson, the smarmy kid who was the de facto arch nemesis of the Ghostwriter team. Overall, the show was always entertaining and funny.