Phoebe

Marty and Jeff lived together from the late 50s until Marty got married, first in a small first floor place over a shop; when rent got steep they moved later to a top floor one-bed flat (I haven’t decided whereabouts yet). The second place was a bit of a shithole and was full of mice and draughts and mould and Jeannie always found it funny that for ages Marty wouldn’t invite her over or even tell her where he lived.

Jeff and Marty met through an ad in a paper where they were both looking for a flatmate. Marty was new to London and didn’t know anyone there; Jeff has lots of friends but wasn’t close enough to anyone/everyone he knew already had settled living arrangements.

Randall & Hopkirk: Private Investigators is the result of many long late night talks from the times they lived out of one room. It started as a running joke between the two of them, where they would pretend to deduce things about strangers and ‘investigate’ the weird comings and goings of their neighbours and occasionally each other, but it’s something Jeff used to want to do as a detective story obsessed kid and it was Jeff who first became serious about the joke.

The joke kind of died, sadly, as there’s nothing like the gruelling hard work of starting a small business and the constant threat of bankruptcy to dampen the humour in it. However, Jeff has done investigations into who is drinking all the tea and making them run out (It’s Marty) (It’s always Marty), and who is stealing cigarettes from him when he had them counted (it’s also Marty).

Their collective financial situation has never been great, but in the early days of the business it was positively dire. Often they couldn’t afford to keep the electricity on and when 1963 rolled on with the coldest winter for 200 years, things were pretty miserable for them.

Jeannie and Jenny are from the rural Lake District.

Jean is the elder by a little over a year.

Their family were upper middle class but the Second World War made things very different financially and growing up, Jeannie and Jenny never experienced the security their parents and grandparents had.

Jeannie has always struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia* but she still did better academically than Jenny did although Jenny was very successful in other ways - she has a good head for business and quickly made herself indispensable at a local business near where she grew up.

Jeannie moved to London for university. I haven’t decided if she completed her degree or what she was studying but I’ll ponder it.

Jeannie and Jenny were close as children but grew apart when they were sent to separate schools when they reached secondary school age. They don’t see each other very often since they live so far away but are trying to reconnect and regain their closeness.

Marty has anxiety (shocker) and OCD. He’s always been like this although it goes through cycles where sometimes it is better, sometimes worse. It was particularly bad he was a preteen, when he and Jeff first started the business, and about a year after he and Jeannie were married. It’s also pretty bad after his death lol but it does still fluctuate. Essentially it gets worse every time he has a lot to process and think about.

Jeff and Jean have both witnessed Marty having panic attacks, Jeannie much less than Jeff. This is mostly because Marty makes more of an effort to remove himself so that he won’t upset Jeannie. It’s silly that it’s this way around because Jeff is better at calming Marty down before panic has a chance to set in and Jeannie is better at calming him down during and afterwards so it’s silly that he should avoid her. But hey. Marty IS silly.

Sometimes Jeff and Jeannie tease Marty about his anxieties. Marty doesn’t mind this; even if they are making a little fun of him it reminds him to step back and check if he is being rational.

When he has it, Jeff is the most frivolous spender (of his own money, not the company’s. He’s not an asshole. And also he needs to pay Jeannie). It stresses Marty out to watch but Jeff is pretty certain it’s none of Marty’s business!

Marty and Jeannie met a long time ago but never stayed in touch. Years later, they ran into each other by chance at a party that Jeff was also at, which is when Jeff met Jeannie.

There was a bit of light competition between Marty and Jeff over Jeannie, but nothing serious and nothing like as devastating or threatening as Marty thinks.

Marty’s aunt Clara has been unofficially estranged from the family. Marty gets on with her fine, and has no idea. They briefly exchanged correspondence when he was in his teens. Her invitation to his wedding, however, went mysteriously missing, and neither Jeff nor Jeannie remembered her after Marty’s death.

Marty and Jeannie got married in September 1966 and it rained all day and everyone got soaked and they all had so much fun <3 Marty cried because he was so happy and Jenny gave him her handkerchief. He forgot he had it and gave it to Jeannie later to give to Jenny; Jeannie also forgot, and found it in a drawer some time after Marty died. She kept it for a bit longer but eventually sent it to Jenny.

Marty is from Liverpool (so it’s a cheap shot. I don’t care). Jeff is from London (……see above)

Marty does like the Beatles, a lot, although he keeps it p quiet. His favourite song of theirs is Any Time At All but it’s up against stiff competition. Jeff is less of a fan, partly because Jeff’s favourite song was Roll Over Beethoven and he heard the Beatles cover, didn’t enjoy it, and kind of wrote them off a bit because of it. He does eventually come around to their later work (Marty is smug about this) and he likes George Harrison’s solo stuff. He wishes he had the time and money to learn to play the sitar.

Jeff’s guitar was from his grandfather as a present

Marty’s family can be very intense and as a child Marty was often called on to mediate arguments between his parents. I think he has siblings but I need to consider this further.

I don’t know where I’m at with Jeff’s life before meeting Marty. We know that he was in the army, but in what capacity? I also think Jeff has a sister and she’s quite a bit older than him.

Jeff, Jeannie and Marty are All bisexual. Real bi trio

Jeff smokes weed, although less so than he used to. Sometimes he and Marty would smoke together but unfortunately weed makes Marty insane and terrible to be around so he stopped joining in. Jeff has also tripped on LSD a couple of times (it’s the 1960s, it’s London, Jeff hangs out in the right places for it. All the cool kids are doing it. Marty is NOT a cool kid, but he lives with Jeff so it’s by association. Jeff is also not really a cool kid but he can pass it off).

Marty is forbidden from LSD after the Incident. (It was fine. He locked himself in a bathroom for 6 hours. Jeff was worried. Marty had a fine time. The bathroom has never been so enthusiastically, yet haphazardly, cleaned, and also never so fascinating to look at.)

Marty and Jeannie are both stress-smokers. Marty is trying to cut down, but unfortunately he is always stressed.

Marty is the better fighter. When they got into scrapes while he was alive, Marty did most of any fighting that was required. He’s not amazing at it but he’s better than Jeff. He has a lot of pent up energy. On occasions where they’re both required to fight, Marty would occasionally have to come to Jeff’s aid. They both have very selective memories about this; Jeff thinks it was Marty who needed rescuing more, and Marty is under the impression that he’s a lot better at fighting than he really is.

She’s clearly experienced at dealing with ghosts. She knows not to make a big deal out of it. She waits patiently for him to realise that she is talking to him; she offers him things from her establishment even though she knows he can’t have anything. Because she knows how important it is to treat ghosts like normal people. Because they are just normal people who have experienced the most final trauma. They wouldn’t be back in the world, haunting, without a reason. So she knows they need compassion; but she also knows that they’re lonely and isolated and need to feel safe and seen and acknowledged.

Idk. Mrs P deals with Marty with such deftness and genuine friendliness. She thinks he’s nice. She knows he’s young; he probably shouldn’t be dead. Something terrible has happened; she doesn’t ask about it. She doesn’t want to know anything; she just wants to get on with her job, quite happily with a ghostly tagalong if he wants. When Marty comes to her for help, she doesn’t hesitate. She takes him seriously immediately and without caring if people think she’s strange for talking to thin air. She doesn’t tell him that he’s worrying over nothing or that he’s being silly; she simply believes him.

And then Jeff gets on with her too! He’s a little jealous maybe when Marty suggests that he and Mrs Pleasance might hang out more; he’s used to having Marty all to himself by now. But he and Mrs P get on great. They’re both people who see ghosts; they have common ground on that. But just as she treats marty the way she treats anyone else, so she treats Jeff. I keep coming back to this but the fact is she knows there’s a story there; two young men and one of them is dead before his time and was disturbed enough to stay as a ghost; the other can see him. There’s something there. But to her they are just two more people to talk to and have a laugh with.

i think theres a lot to be said about martys death as like. a metaphor or symbolic of severe trauma. its a life altering event that fundamentally alters everyone involved. marty obviously. because hes dead. but what if we think about it in a less literal, more abstract way? i dont know. there are a few experiences for the characters in this show which regardless of how they were intended, resonate a lot. for the sake of argument im avoiding referring to the event as 'martys death' in order to generalise the experiences and make them less specific. martys death for the sake of this post is an event. any event. that changes the lives of the people it touches both subtly and tangibly

its a traumatic event which means that marty can no longer relate to or interact with other people . hes isolated and ostracised and numbed, literally. he's derealised and dissociated, hes out-of-body. the traumatic event has left him unable to engage physically with anyone or anything around him. the only physically 'real' thing to marty is himself - which we can see when he says to bugsy "you're solid!": he doesnt recognise them as both being incorporeal. to marty, it's the rest of the world that doesn't exist anymore, and him and bugsy (someone with shared trauma) are all that's left. he is Such an isolated character, as a direct result of the traumatic event. it's left him with the ability to detect 'bad vibes' (hypervigilance). and it's not something that can be reversed - now that it's happened, that's it, but even tho he is often unhappy and hypervigilant and anxious and wishes he could go back to how he was before, he still does find moments to be silly and have fun, and eventually also to find excitement and empowerment in his new state of being. because hes still a person, even if most people dont treat him as such. his trauma means that other people no longer recognise him as a person, and that's not their fault. the living arent deliberately ostracising marty: it's his trauma which has distinctly separated him from everyone else. it's left him silent and invisible and almost completely alienated. no matter how much he yells to people to warn that they're going to be murdered, or yells for help, nobody is paying attention to him.

for jeff, his best friend is dead. yea. but jeff stops grieving this loss. in a very parallel way to marty being frozen in time and unable to continue his life, jeff is also trapped.when jeff comes home after the funeral, we see the beginnings of his journey with grief, and its a grieving process that has been interrupted; a healing process gone wrong. now he can't move on; marty is a constant reminder to him. its no wonder jeff gets angry with marty, occasionally wants marty to leave. and while jeff might feel trapped by marty, and marty feel hurt by jeff not recognising how tragic death was for marty, neither of them are to blame. its a terrible situation - and the evil isnt in either of them or their reactions to it. marty might have trouble with boundaries and jeff might occasionally be callous. but theyre just two traumatised people. the evil is that marty was killed at all.

jeff knows that things can't ever be the same; he has the dual struggle of mourning the loss of a normal life and a normal friendship, and accepting the fact that this is normality for them now. marty is who he is, the traumatic event happened and can't be undone, and marty is still here and suffering and so so deserving of compassion. sometimes when marty is silly jeff smiles a little bit and he loves him so much and he remembers that he does; because a lot of the time, the struggle in the aftermath of that traumatic event makes him too wrung out and stressed and tired to remember that that's his best friend, his best friend is right there and needs jeff as much as jeff needs him, if not more so

jeff ALSO now can't relate normally to the people around him. in the second ever episode jeannie, one of his best friends, tricks him into a hold in a psychiatric clinic, based on nothing but a few instances of jeff behaving a little strangely, right after having been bereaved. jeff has to act normal at all times under difficult or even impossible circumstances; he has to maintain the illusion of normality even more than marty does, even while marty is yelling directly into his ear. while marty might perform and mimic a 'living' existence (sitting on furniture, which we know he doesnt need to do; speaking to people he knows cant hear him; not allowing jeff to touch him so that they can both maintain the fantasy of normality after trauma) but for Jeff the illusion is crucial to his safety

jeannie is the one we might think is ironically spared some of this, even though she and marty were married. shes not involved in marty's continued existence post-trauma in the same way jeff and marty are. they deliberately keep it from her to preserve her wellbeing and, in jeff's case at least, to ensure that her ability to move on with her life isn’t curtailed the way Jeffs and Martys have been. and jeannie is trying; but it's not the case - not yet. caught up in his own life, and marty caught up in his death, jeff sometimes forgets that jeannie lost her husband, recently. him saying "i thought you got over marty ages ago" when it's been less than a year seems like an absolutely deranged thing to say to a widow when you hear it out of context. but it has to be a moment for jeff to remember: he and marty have sacrificed the healing of the grieving process in favour of what they have now, in favour of continuing their friendship and being there for each other. but jeannie hasnt. jeannie is still going through it in all of its agony. jeannie is consistently vulnerable when it comes to marty; over and over again she is manipulated by people who take advantage of her grief. and it's easy to say well she's being silly or naive, but thats because the audience follow the show primarily through jeff and marty's eyes, not jeannies. The only person Jeannie could talk to about marty seems so altered by his grief that she doesnt feel she can even bring Marty up in conversation

we also see that jeannie has been isolated from other people because of the traumatic event. Jenny comes down to see her shortly afterwards; but crucially when we see jeannie among her friends of whom we see, she has many! She is alone in a crowd, just as Jeff and Marty are. At parties she is on her own. She’s in the corner, changed by her experience of finding her husband dead just outside their house. The people around her are amiable and friendly but they don’t understand. They don’t approach her; and they don’t listen when she expresses reluctance at being asked to join in an activity she finds deeply uncomfortable.

All three characters love each other so much; and as a direct result of the traumatic event, they still sometimes harm each other inadvertently. Jeff harms Jeannie by forgetting that she is still grieving; perhaps he even harms her by keeping huge secrets from her even if he does so under oath and the best of intentions. Jeff harms Marty by not telling him ahead of time that Jeannie is an alibi when they’re in bed together; he harms him by being insensitive to Marty’s limitations; he harms him by dismissing his fears and anxieties out of hand; he harms him by rejecting him and telling him to leave. Marty harms Jeff and Jeannie both, tragically, by his inability to let them go. He harms Jeff by neglecting to observe Jeff’s boundaries appropriately. He harms Jeannie, albeit without her knowledge, in his jealous urge to keep her from moving on and finding someone else, even if he doesn’t act on it. He does Jeannie a disservice occasionally by underestimating her, and so does Jeff. Jeannie harms Jeff by not trusting him, by tricking him and having him confined without ever speaking to him about her concerns. She harms Marty without meaning to when she half believes that sheldon is Marty, and by agreeing to help cecil exorcise Marty.

None of these things are deliberate; and I think all three characters can overcome this. They love each other enough. But they’re just people. They’re trying to navigate a life that has become strange to them.

jeff: breathes the same air as jeannie

marty: