Review: "Celebrity, Help My House is Haunted" Season 3, Episode 1: Paul Burrell

I watched the first episode of the new ‘Celebrity, Help My House is Haunted’ last night, with the “celebrity” being Paul Burrell. Aside from the numerous television appearances Paul did following the death of Diana, I’m aware of who he is being a Cheshire native myself. As soon as I saw he was the first Celebrity, I had an inkling in which direction the episode was going to go and I seriously hoped I was wrong.

Before I continue, I want to say that I do thoroughly enjoy watching ‘HMHIH’ and think the team have done some excellent episodes with “normal people”, so major kudos to Barri, Jayne, Ian and the team for those.

Last night though, I felt was horrendous and it was as though a preset narrative, presented by Paul, was allowed to dominate the show, “Diana is with me”. Whilst the latter part of the show was more directed toward the misfortune of the Fleet family (the occupants of the previous house on the site), the first half was virtually, exclusively about Diana and utilising very…spurious soundclips from the devices the team used. For instance, at the recap session, Barri identified the word “France” to Paul when they were talking about their spirit trigger session. Having paused, rewound and watched numerous times, I’m still getting the word “soap” – make of that what you will.

I will always afford paranormal TV shows a lot of time and a lot of credibility, until such time as they remove the latter themselves. I’m really hoping that this won’t happen with this new series of CHMHIH – obviously, critique is objective so go and watch for yourselves with an open mind, but the above is just my thoughts.

I really hope the next episodes are far better and less predictable, though having seen a snippet of Paul Chuckle saying “to me, Barry” into a dictaphone for an EVP session, my hope is a little more diminished than I’d like.

But I shall keep watching and hope for better, more engaging episodes soon.