Ghost hunting inspired Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s new Truth Seekers series

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s ghost-hunting antics helped inspire their new TV series Truth Seekers.

The supernatural comedy drama launches on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, October 30 – just in time for a spook-tacular Halloween.

The UK Amazon Original series starring Frost and Pegg features scenes shot on location in Welwyn Garden City last year at the former Shredded Wheat factory site.

Truth Seekers is about a group of part-time paranormal investigators who team up to uncover and film ghost sightings across the UK, sharing their adventures on an online channel for all to see.

However, as they stake out haunted churches, underground bunkers and abandoned hospitals with their array of homemade ghost-detecting gizmos, their supernatural experiences grow more frequent, as they begin to uncover a conspiracy that could bring about Armageddon for the entire human race.

Truth Seekers’ origins trace back to the days Frost and Pegg would go ghost hunting as young men.

Despite never witnessing anything paranormal, the pair would thrive on dredging up the creepiest tales from their twisted imaginations to scare the living daylights out of one another.

Pegg said: “It [Truth Seekers] was based on mine and Nick’s adventures loosely ghost hunting, which we did a couple of times when we were young.

“We would sort of drive out to an abbey and walk around pretending to believe in ghosts.”

Frost added: “Simon and I used to be ghost-hunters, I would say children, but we were like 30.

“And it wasn’t ghost-hunting, it was just getting in his car and driving to Essex where there’s an old Saxon church and just frightening one another, walking around the cemetery at night on our own.

“I’d always get quite badly injured, I think I suffered two really bad injuries, including knocking myself unconscious and Simon left me because he thought I was mucking about.

“I think that was partly where it came from. Just normal people, you know, wanting to experience something super-unnormal.”

When the Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead duo formed their own production company, Stolen Picture, it was clear Truth Seekers should be their first TV series – the pair’s first as a creative team since the cult classic, Spaced.

With the company’s creative directors, Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz, they began forming a paranormal investigation show which focused as much on the horror as on the comedy.

Frost said: “The actual nuts and bolts of the show itself came when James Serafinowicz and I – the writer who co-created the show – had an idea of: what if this guy, Gus Roberts, was also, as well as being a satellite field engineer and cable installation expert, tapped into the world of the supernatural.”

Favouring creeping dread and practical visual effects over CGI, the richly-layered eight-episode series brings together a cluster of disparate characters who start to uncover ghostly goings-on in rural areas of the UK.

Nick Frost was always penned to play the lead, Gus Roberts, with Simon Pegg as his jobsworth boss, Dave – putting a spin on their past on-screen relationships.

The Truth Seekers cast also includes Samson Kayo as Elton, Malcolm McDowell as Gus’ father-in-law Richard, Emma D’Arcy as Astrid, and Susan Wokoma as Helen.

Samson Kayo said: “The script just felt like how I thought it would be. It had that Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, sort of vibe.”

Filming in numerous locations in the south of England and on sound stages at Ealing Studios, where Shaun of the Dead was also filmed, the production lasted nine weeks during summer/autumn of 2019.