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Would a six-year-old boy ghost work on the hit TV series Ghosts? They almost tried it in the original BBC series, but plans changed

The creators of Ghosts admit that not every idea they had made it into the show, but they still never wasted a good idea.

Larry Rickard as Robin in Ghosts — Image credit: BBC

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Thu Nov 06 2025

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The sad truth of writing is that not every idea is going to make it into the finished product. In fact, most of what you write will be left on the editing room floor, but that doesn’t mean that you have to count it as wasted effort. Take a lesson from the creators of Ghosts, whose popular Robin the Caveman character was originally pitched as a six-year-old boy.

That little detail was delivered by Laurence Rickard and Martha Howe-Douglas, the co-creators of UK sitcom Ghosts, while at MCM London 2025. In the show, the character of Robin the Caveman is a surprisingly thoughtful and wise mentor to many of the other characters due to the fact that he has been a ghost since before written history and has therefore witnessed most of human history. However, he wasn’t originally pitched as a rough-around-the-edges caveman character.

One of the characters that Rickard and Howe-Douglas revealed were pitched but never made it into the show was Ancient William, a six-year-old boy who died in prehistory. When asked why Ancient William got cut, Rickard answered that he didn’t really ... he just changed.

“Ancient William became Robin, really,” he said. “We were like, wouldn’t it be funny if they were like, they talked with venerable about William. Like, you were expecting this sort of 101-year-old. ‘Well, of course.’ And then, again, it’s a six-year-old kid and we were like, we love the idea of a really unlikely wise man and so we ended up sort of making that case.”

So, writers out there, take note. Never discard an idea completely; just find a way to rework it into something that works better for your project.

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