Ben Willbond is a precise comic actor and a writer who understands how an ensemble works. We recommend Ghosts for both: his Captain is absurdly regimented, but Willbond allows us to care about the man inside the uniform.
Fi1m perspective
In Ghosts (2019), the Captain's battledress stays immaculate while Button House peels around him. Lucy Williams's costume establishes him at a glance, and Willbond sustains the joke through his precise voice and movement. We grew fond of the Captain because Willbond makes his insistence on order look like something he needs, rather than merely an opportunity to boss people about. The performance allows a regimented man to be vulnerable without suddenly becoming someone else. It is fine comic acting within an ensemble that has plenty of other claims on our attention.
The route to that settled character runs through the multiple historical parts and sketch writing of Horrible Histories (2009), then the collective fantasy comedy of Yonderland (2013). The six-strong Them There group kept those performers together as the stories grew longer. Bill (2015), co-written with Laurence Rickard, took their historical comedy into a feature. The pair also wrote We Are Not Alone (2022). Their Ghosts stories are developed together before individual drafts, which makes it unwise to assign all the credit to one name.
Ghosts is better built than its gentle silliness initially suggests, though its hotel plot goes nowhere. Production designer Amy Maguire's peeling interiors and cinematographer Will Hanke's plain daylight give the actors ordinary rooms to inhabit, without fog or a blue filter announcing the supernatural. That helps Willbond: the Captain's military bearing looks funnier when the house around him refuses to keep up. As a co-creator and writer, he belongs to a team that knows how to keep nine characters distinct within half an hour. The weakness is that affection for those characters can make us rather forgiving about where the story is going.
Simon Hynd's Ghosts: The Possession of Button House (2026) makes that familiarity an advantage. Willbond returns as the Captain and shares the writing, while the returning ensemble provides enough comic variety to justify the longer outing. Giving an existing character the new trouble is a sensible way to expand the story without spending the film rebuilding the company. It is easy to follow without prior acquaintance with the series, though the pleasure still rests on enjoying this particular company. For Willbond, start with the series and give the Captain time.
Biography
Ben Willbond is an English actor and screenwriter. Born on 18 January 1973 in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, he studied at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He began performing in comedy, including as part of the duo 'Ben & Arn', which won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer in 1999, and appeared in solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
He is best known for his work with the Them There collective on the children's sketch show Horrible Histories (2009–2013), the fantasy comedy Yonderland (2013–2016), which he co-created, co-wrote and starred in, and the sitcom Ghosts (2019–), in which he plays The Captain. Other television credits include recurring roles in The Thick of It and Rev.
Willbond has appeared in films including Bill (2015), which he co-wrote, Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) and St Trinian's (2007). He played Jeremy in the 2014 episode 'Sardines' of the anthology series Inside No. 9.
