He’s being attractively post-modern
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
6735 / 50000
[the following contains mild SPOILERS to Life on Mars & Ashes to Ashes]
The general response I’ve seen to Ashes to Ashes has been “pretty good, though not as good as Life on Mars, obviously.”
Me, I like Ashes to Ashes better. It has all the elements that I really liked about Life on Mars - black humour, commentary on changing attitudes in the police force over the decades, snark, Gene Hunt, bombing around in an obnoxiously big car, more Gene Hunt.
But so many elements are improved. Hunt’s support crew, the adorably clueless Chris and Raymondo, feel a lot more like real people and less like caricatures. Keeley Hawes’ Alex Drake is a more sympathetic protagonist to me than John Simm’s Sam Tyler, and not just because she’s female. She has far more at stake in her attempts to find her way home, and is a lot more realised as a character.
(Going home was never going to be much of a happy ending for Sam, but Alex actually has something tangible to return to)
The narrative of Ashes to Ashes is more coherent. Life on Mars was hamstrung by its crappy fake mystery set up (am I dead? am I in hospital?) which was reiterated in every credits sequence, despite the fact that every episode made it reasonably clear what was happening to him in the “real” world as he descended into fantasy. What we didn’t know was how it had happened, or how he was going to get out of it, but the show kept pretending there were other mysteries in truly annoying fashion.
The cool thing about Alex is that she knows exactly what is happening to her. She knows all about Sam Tyler and his history, and she knows that her real body has been shot. She knows that the weeks and weeks she is spending with Gene and the police team are happening in between mere minutes as her body falls, is found, is transported to hospital… and she knows it didn’t end that well for him. The mystery is firmly in the right place, without any pretence, and the tension comes from her attempts to change history and the frustrating gaps in her memory as the fantasy of the 1980’s sucks her further in. I love that we learn more about her life back home with nearly every episode - and the many people in her life, whereas Sam’s Mum aside, he remained mostly a blank slate. I was delighted that the question of her missing husband and the father of her daughter was finally addressed recently, but even more delighted that they waited until well into season two to even answer that question. (it was quite joyful to see her lecturing a 14 yr old on how someday he’d be slobbing around the house and pretending to write his novel instead of being a decent husband and father)
I also like the ongoing story about corruption in the Met, and the new expectations on the police. Gene Hunt’s role as a Thuggish Sweeney-style copper was played mostly for laughs in Life on Mars, with Sam Tyler standing there to lecture him on his naughtiness. In Ashes to Ashes, you can see that Gene is genuinely trying to adapt to the new world, and find a compromise between his own style of ‘getting things done’ and the way the police force is now expected to be seen as a force for good. It makes him a lot more sympathetic.
I also like Shaz, the ‘women are just in the police force to make the tea’ representative, a lot better than Annie from LoM. Annie was a completely blank cypher who was used throughout Life on Mars as an excuse for Sam to talk to himself without actually talking to himself (she thought he was mad but basically fed his delusions and did nothing constructive about it, because it was convenient for the storyline, BORING). Shaz looked at first as if she was only there to be a love interest for Chris and to contribute to his ongoing quest (started back in LoM) to become a New Man, but she also gives Alex another woman to talk to (Bechdel Test, hooray!), and despite being almost entirely confined to the office, has a lot more to say about women’s role in society than Annie ever did - she is a much stronger, less passive character. There was a point close to the end of season one where the audience’s assumption that she was the expendable one (including my assumption, to my shame) was very sneakily played upon, and I liked that it went in a far less obvious direction with her.
In short, while Life on Mars had its definite moments, Ashes to Ashes is doing everything it did, backwards and in high heels. I liked Life on Mars, but I LOVE Ashes to Ashes. I am however quite glad that Alex has stopped dressing quite so much like something out of a rock video - her season one wardrobe was appalling, and I refuse to believe that even in the 80’s, a female Detective Inspector could get away with wearing off-the-shoulder tops.
[Note: am watching & caught up on the eps as shown on Australian tv but please don't refer to anything Ashes-to-Ashes related from the second half of season 2 or later in the comments]