Everywhere you turn in the BEDLAM world, there are ghosts, specters and images of grisly murders from year’s past; and each episode is a lesson in why it is never a good idea to convert a former insane asylum into apartments. For roommates Kate, Jed, Ryan and Molly, life should be easy. They are young, beautiful and carefree – or they were until they took up residence at Bedlam Heights.
One would think that the problems began when Jed, who can see ghosts and gets flashes of people’s deaths when he touches objects, moved in. But as the first episode clearly showed, the troubles at Bedlam Heights were there long before Jed arrived. He just arrived in the nick of time to help circumvent some of the more recent hauntings.
Over the course of the first season, each of the Bedlam inhabitants has their own run-ins with the ghostly, non-corporeal figures lurking in the shadows.
For Kate, her family has owned Bedlam dating back to its prior incarnation as an insane asylum. Her overbearing father quashes any attempt to suggest that there may be something either supernatural going on at Bedlam Heights, or that there has been any true incident of foul-play – despite the fact that Kate and Molly’s friend Zoe went missing and has never been found. In last week’s episode, after Kate found Zoe’s necklace in a furnace oven deep within the recesses of Bedlam’s cavernous basements, she began to wonder with dawning horror if her own father may somehow be involved.
For Molly, her hope is only to find a nice guy and be friends with everyone. Yet her well-intention goals are constantly thwarted by the ghosts who want to in-turn stalk her and use her for their own devious purposes. Bedlam is no place for a “good girl” who is unknowingly surrounded by so many bad temptations.
Similarly, Ryan would like nothing else than to meet the right person and have a quiet peaceful life. Alas, that is never going to be possible with his flatmates vying for his romantic attentions and nursing a darker-side than his roommates suspect. He also manages to get roped into Jed’s cursed world searching for ghosts and trying to prevent further deadly catastrophes.
Finally, Jed is the one who sees the spirits of the dead every time he looks around. His curse of being connected to those hovering in the afterlife haunts him and terrorizes him every day of his life. Freshly released from a mental institution for his inability to handle being a bridge between the two worlds, Jed seems to have a tenuous grasp on what is real and not real at times. But he does acutely sense when a spirit means malevolent harm and will do anything to prevent it from succeeding.
While the ghost-of-the-week stories are easy enough to follow, the darker, more sinister stories involving Kate and her father and their connection to root of Bedlam’s unending grief and continuing horror are absolutely spine-chilling. Is Kate’s father luring young women to their death and disposing of them in Bedlam Heights? Did he seduce and kill Jed’s mother years ago? Is Kate possessed by a clever spirit just lying in wait for a chance to enact his or her revenge? Will Jed be able to stop them all before it spirals out of control and combusts in a bloody-rampage?
In the first season finale, Molly and Ryan naively tempt fate by playing with tarot cards. In another time and place, that would just mean a night of innocent fun. But in Bedlam Heights, it is an invitation for someone else to come out and play – and it is not exactly all fun and games like they hoped. 
To see how our quartet survive, be sure to tune in for the season finale on Saturday, November 5th at 9PM on BBC America.
Tiffany Vogt is a contributing writer to TheTVAddict. She has a great love for television and firmly believes that entertainment is a world of wondrous adventures that deserves to be shared and explored – she invites you to join her. Please feel free to contact Tiffany at Tiffany_Vogt_2000@yahoo.com or follow her at on Twitter (@TVWatchtower).