You know what? I like this show.1 It’s a pleasant, light-hearted British sitcom which has the considerable benefit over most sitcoms that it is actually quite funny. The concept is that a Alison Cooper inherits an old country manor and, as she and her boyfriend were looking for a place, they decide to move in and renovate the place. But it is haunted by a variety of colourful ghosts from different eras. By the end of the second episode, Alison has gone through a near-death experience and she can see and hear the ghosts.
Obviously, the first thing she does once communication has been established is play chess with them. And so we see Alison and one of the ghosts on opposite sites of a chessboard.
Apart from the h1 square, which, sadly, stays out of view of the camera, we see the whole board quite well. So my reconstruction is pretty good. The reconstruction is, not the position. The position is horrible.2
Alison is playing black. Her opponent is a troglodyte ghost who speaks English like an aristocratic explorer’s local sidekick in a dubious adventure novel from 1900. But such novels are usually more believable than this position..
It turns out that white is to move. But instead of taking the knight, Alison’s opponent says that he wants to take the b5 pawn with his knight. Actually, he says horsey to go duku daka diku while pointing to c4, c5, and b5 in succession.3 Alison executes the move and then gets interrupted by the ghost of a poet who reads her some Shakespeare. The conceit is that he’s infatuated with her, but I think he just wants to distract her so she doesn’t defile our game any further. And I applaud that.
Realism: 1/5 This position is so outrageously silly that the black bishop on g1 barely even registers. Where did the other black bishop disappear to? Why the hell did white promote to a bishop? And where? Why was it not taken immediately?
Probable winner: Who knows? I want to say that white is the wort player ever, but then I realise his opponent let him promote. I think that, perhaps, checkers is the real winner here.
1. [At least both episodes I’ve seen.] ↩
2. [It’s probably the scariest thing in the whole show.] ↩
3. [This is not only highly undignified but also wrong. The knight teleports to b5, it doesn’t pass through any other squares.] ↩