[1] The firm, located in South Ealing, is originally run by Fred Mumford, a recently deceased loser who feels he can find work for ghosts whose lives were as unsuccessful as his.

Over the course of several series, other characters were added: Hazel McWitch, a Scottish witch; Nadia Popov, a Dutch ghost who suffers from hay fever and teleports away when she sneezes; and the pantomime horse Dobbin, who first appears in a one-off Christmas special called Rentasanta and is brought to life by Claypole, who is unable to cancel the spell afterwards, thus allowing Dobbin to remain in the show for the rest of the run.

Adam Painting, a local entrepreneur played by Christopher Biggins, frequently appears in episodes, and tries, with limited success, to involve the ghosts in his latest business enterprise.

Davenport and Mumford's absences were explained at the start of the series by the pair having gone on an extended tour of safari parks (which provided set-up for a joke about "big game haunting").

[citation needed] Since November 2023, all 9 series (minus the Christmas special) were made available through the UK BritBox service as part of their "Back To School" section.

A young Lisa McCune played Julia, a character who visits the agency mistakenly believing them to be living people who can exorcise her haunted apartment, and ends up working as their secretary after they help her chase her poltergeist away anyway.

Deadline reported in December 2010 that "Warner Bros had acquired the rights to RentaGhost and was going to develop it into a Beetlejuice-style afterlife feature comedy vehicle for Russell Brand as Fred Mumford.