The Living and the Dead (BBC1, 9pm)

AS you'd expect, the cast can't keep away from real-life ghosts stories when there's a lull in shooting at Horton Court, an old stone manor house in Gloucestershire.

TV Times reports a shiver down the spine as stars Colin Morgan and Charlotte Spencer speak of spooky events linked to filming such as the sound of an old-style phone ringing, in spite of it being cut off years previously, and papers suddenly flying off a shelf during a Ouija board scene.

"I don't get a bad feeling about this place, but i wouldn't stay here my myself, admits 25-year-old Spencer. "People have seen a woman near a fireplace and a little boy on the roof. During one scene I heard loud footsteps and thought it was someone who didn't know we were filming, but when I turned around there was no one there," she says.

Set in Somerset in 1894, Charlotte and her psychologist husband Nathan (Morgan) move from London to run the family farm, Shepzoy House. Strange and terrifying incidents start to plague the couple and nearby villagers.

Morgan says: "The locals are superstitious and there is a sense that the land holds the memories of the past and that it's being physically disturbed because new machines are churning up things that have been there for centuries."

His character is intrigued by events at first, until memories begin to surface regarding his first wife and young son. "In the first episode the vicar's daughter, Harriet, speaks in the voices of he dead and is violent. As a psychologist, Nathan is ahead of his time and also wants to heal people, so he is fascinated. He thinks this is hysteria and science-0based, but it becomes completely unexplainable, questionable and more personal for him," adds Morgan, who is best-known for his role in Saturday evening series Merlin.

"Nathan begins to experience things both through the locals and himself that put him to the test and force him to really tread the line between the scientific and the supernatural. When more and more people are coming to him, and he starts experiencing things himself, he becomes enraptured in the world, very obsessed and very internal. It digs up his demons and one of them is his dead son Gabriel. He sees an image related to his son, who drowned in the lake beside the house. Supposedly, a boy did drown in the lake here, which I hope is a coincidence."

Morgan believes that what makes this series different from the traditional ghost stories is the central love theme between the

couple. "There is an emotional heart to this. It just happens to have a really scary element as well, and it also takes unexpected turns for a period drama."

Love Your Garden (ITV, 8pm)

WHEN it comes to feelgood TV, this is one of the best shows on the box, and the good news is it's back for a new series. Here, Alan Titchmarsh and the team head to Hull to transform the garden of a 90-year-old land girl and ballroom dancing devotee. Frailty has seen the twice-widowed great-grandmother lose the ability to tend her once beautiful gardens, so they have become neglected no-go areas. After Alan surprises her at a tea dance, the team transforms her gardens into spaces she can safely tend to again.

Born on the Same Day (C4, 9pm)

THE story of three people born on September 26, 1939. Ricky Tomlinson flirted with far right politics and was jailed for his part in the Builders' Strike of 1972, before he took up acting and became one of Britain's best-loved thespians thanks to shows such as Brookside, Cracker and The Royle Family. Cameras also follow would-be jockey and entrepreneur Vic Young, who faced a crisis in the financial crash of 1992, and midwife Julia Allison, who made it her mission to prove the safety of home birth.

Viv Hardwick