“NIGHTWATCH” REVIEW: DAISY MAY AND CHARLIE COOPER’S PARANORMAL SNOOZEFEST

Siblings Daisy May and Charlie Cooper, best known for their sharp comedy in This Country, have turned their attention to the supernatural with their new BBC series Nightwatch. The premise sounds intriguing the duo spend nights in some of Britain’s most haunted places, from eerie prisons to pubs with centuries of ghostly tales. On paper, it’s the perfect mix of chills and laughs.

Unfortunately, that’s about where the excitement ends. What could’ve been a genuinely gripping or at least entertaining paranormal series quickly becomes a six-episode drag. The show feels torn between being a ghost hunt and a comedy sketch and it doesn’t quite succeed as either.

Each episode is around 30 minutes long, but it feels longer because most of it is just the siblings chatting or joking around. It often seems like they’re mocking the whole idea rather than genuinely trying to find out if anything spooky is happening.

Take Episode 1, set in the abandoned HMP Gloucester prison a place with a chilling past, echoing footsteps, and a long history of hauntings. You’d think this would be the perfect setup for tension and atmosphere. Instead, the siblings spend more time laughing, waving a spirit radio about, and ordering take-away than they do actually investigating. The spooky setting gets completely wasted in a blur of jokes and half-hearted reactions.

By Episode 2, the pattern continues. This time, they visit a haunted 16th-century pub in the Midlands, and instead of proper equipment like EMF meters or spirit boxes, they use… a teddy bear to “detect” temperature changes. It’s hard to tell if they’re trying to communicate with spirits or just entertaining themselves.

Then there’s Episode 4 the York one where they explore the Everyman Cinema and the Golden Fleece pub, two famously haunted locations in one of Europe’s most ghost-filled cities. During the night, Daisy May says she hears footsteps coming up the stairs that stop outside her door no footsteps back down. That could’ve been a great suspenseful moment, but instead Charlie sets up a camera upside down for reasons known only to him. Rather than leaning into the atmosphere, they start joking again, and any real tension disappears.

If the BBC wanted to make a proper paranormal show, they could’ve at least equipped them properly. Where are the EMF readers, EVP recorders, or thermal cameras? Even their use of a torch is wrong you’re meant to turn it fully off before asking questions, not leave it flickering and call it “activity.”

To be fair, the historical tours at the start of each episode are the best bits. The guides share fascinating stories about the locations’ dark pasts, and for a moment you think, okay, here we go. But the investigations themselves always fall flat it’s like watching a pair of tourists play-acting as ghost hunters.

Honestly, if you want real paranormal entertainment, you’d be better off watching Sam and Colby on YouTube. They bring structure, equipment, and genuine curiosity to their investigations while still keeping things fun. Nightwatch, by comparison, just feels like a missed opportunity more of a sibling sleep-over than a serious search for spirits.

In short, Nightwatch could’ve been eerie, funny, and clever instead, it’s mostly aimless banter in haunted buildings. A ghost of what it could’ve been.