Ashes to Ashes 2:2
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Ashes is going to kill me - I end up going to bed late on Monday evening and then waking up ridiculously early on Tuesday morning, head buzzing. Heigh ho. The following contains many spoilers if you have yet to see the episode, and it does include quite a lot of whinging and moaning. So if that bothers you, please, just don't read it.
To be honest, and honesty will probably win me no friends, I've been slightly ho-hum about episode 2:1. In detail, I largely loved it; it was the general tone of the whole picture that bothered me. I have the definite fear that in a misguided attempt to please all of the people all of the time, MG and AP have overly re-embraced Life on Marsisms. Voices heard from the future via other people/the telly; a mysterious figure who seems to know more than they're saying; the buddy/buddy tone turn taken with Gene and Alex; Ray's inexplicable return to Bad!Ray; and so forth. It saddens me, not that Ashes 1 was without faults, but it really had the chance to come into its own with this second series and instead it was increasingly making me think of it as LoM series three. Which will no doubt cause the Martians physical pain and prompt cries of 'No, it's not as good!'. Anyway...
To my dismay, it wasn't just a blip in episode one. We started out with Alex hearing voices talking about her medical condition in 2008 behind a door she can't open. So far, so Sam Tyler. And that's a thing; I find it's not taking a great leap of imagination to envisage Sam Tyler saying an awful lot of Alex's lines. She's lost her edge. Okay, so it annoyed a lot of people, but hey folks, people are frequently annoying. That's partly what makes her such a great and believable character. Instead I'm now worrying that she'll start annoying me by being turned into 'Samantha Tyler, whining git'. One hug of the television from you, DI Drake, and I'm throwing something.
And Alex turning into Sam, brings me to her relationship with Ray. In series one, after some initial difficulties, Ray and Alex actually got on. They made a good team. In last night's episode there was a flash of that when Ray handed over the evidence about the tampered brakes on the Princess, but it was flanked by two instances where their relationship had utterly, utterly changed - into Sam and Ray. Aaaargh. Ray has been completely returned to 70s Ray as if '81 Ray had never happened, and there's absolutely no explanation for it. For me it's lost the character all credibility. Then to have him as a stalwart of the Masons? Ray? And to have managed to never mention it to Gene in all these years? For Gene to never have noticed that Ray disappeared every Lodge night? I'm sorry, it beggars belief.
But we need to be in the habit of suspending belief, right? I mean we're having to live with the idea of a 2008 copper flung back into the 1980s. Which is exactly why I think it's essential that the characters be solid and consistent. The more outrageous the situation, the more important consistent character becomes. I can bang on about it for ages. As, indeed, I am. So moving on then...
It'd also help if the crime-of-the-week plot could stand up to even the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Alex made a deductive leap that would have made Sherlock Holmes proud. Somehow, from the evidence of a Sooty puppet in one place and a Sweep puppet in the other, she cracked the case. Presumably the ingrained dirt on Sooty's right paw and the way Sweep squeaked with a marked limp gave the game away? Ack, was it really so impossible to come up with a slightly better clue than that? It's lazy writing.
I could go on about MG and AP's irritating habit of including a cause-of-the-week in their writing (Bonekickers was dogged by it), the cudgel-over-the-head approach to 80s references, the entirely unnecessary childbirth scene (another case of putting something in purely so as to put Gene Hunt in a New Man caring situation, I fear) and the fact that time would have been better spent patching that enormous plot hole, the disappointment that the uncertainty of whether Gene was bad or not has apparently been so swiftly resolved, etc etc. I could do all that, but you get the idea.
If you've got this far, you're probably thinking I hated it. Which, actually, I didn't - It's just much more fun complaining... No, no, I don't mean that. No, I liked it principally because the spark between Gene and Alex was back again, and I actually hadn't realised just how much my enjoyment of Ashes relied on that. Without, it tend to fall as flat as a three-day-old soufflé. With it, her situation of being stuck in 1982 becomes 100% more complicated and thus 100% more interesting. And they just act it so well; the chemistry works, and that's not so common a thing in television drama that you should waste it when it's there.
Then there were some cracking one liners - this week Gene's response to Alex's 'You're playing with them?' - 'No, that's just the way I'm standing' has to take the prize. For subtle reference to how times have changed (See? They can do them) I liked 'Someone hurry up and invent drag and drop'). Oh, and I chuckled at 'It wasn't exactly a letter, was it, guv? "Oxtail. Now."?' Keeley was, once again, ace; I thought she brilliantly conveyed how isolated she felt when Gene appeared to have gone over to the dark side. But it was her cheery dismissal of the 'ETA 2 minutes' message on the computer as she'd apparently forgotten who she really is that was most chilling. Backs up all those theories that they're all in the same situation, but have simply forgotten their previous lives, doesn't it...?
As for the greater mystery, I'm no further forward. I tend to over-complicate matters, so while I'd be inclined to say Gene's comment of 'Death of a Princess' over the crashed car is just another herring for the shoal of Princess Di-related fish, it'll probably turn out to be straightforwardly all connected to Diana somehow. How, I have no idea, but anyway... Dr Death had only the briefest of cameos, so not much progress there either. As for the corruption, that's giving every appearance of being as obvious as a blue whale in a goldfish bowl. It does bring up an interesting prospect though; if Gene effectively takes on the Masons, that'll put him and Ray at loggerheads. That has potential. I do hope they don't waste it.
100% entertained, 60% amused, 50% irritated, 10% confused. 4 out of five; dropped point for gaping plot hole (again), cause-of-the-week, and unnecessary childbirth with particular reference to that groanworthy link to 'Come On, Eileen'.
To be honest, and honesty will probably win me no friends, I've been slightly ho-hum about episode 2:1. In detail, I largely loved it; it was the general tone of the whole picture that bothered me. I have the definite fear that in a misguided attempt to please all of the people all of the time, MG and AP have overly re-embraced Life on Marsisms. Voices heard from the future via other people/the telly; a mysterious figure who seems to know more than they're saying; the buddy/buddy tone turn taken with Gene and Alex; Ray's inexplicable return to Bad!Ray; and so forth. It saddens me, not that Ashes 1 was without faults, but it really had the chance to come into its own with this second series and instead it was increasingly making me think of it as LoM series three. Which will no doubt cause the Martians physical pain and prompt cries of 'No, it's not as good!'. Anyway...
To my dismay, it wasn't just a blip in episode one. We started out with Alex hearing voices talking about her medical condition in 2008 behind a door she can't open. So far, so Sam Tyler. And that's a thing; I find it's not taking a great leap of imagination to envisage Sam Tyler saying an awful lot of Alex's lines. She's lost her edge. Okay, so it annoyed a lot of people, but hey folks, people are frequently annoying. That's partly what makes her such a great and believable character. Instead I'm now worrying that she'll start annoying me by being turned into 'Samantha Tyler, whining git'. One hug of the television from you, DI Drake, and I'm throwing something.
And Alex turning into Sam, brings me to her relationship with Ray. In series one, after some initial difficulties, Ray and Alex actually got on. They made a good team. In last night's episode there was a flash of that when Ray handed over the evidence about the tampered brakes on the Princess, but it was flanked by two instances where their relationship had utterly, utterly changed - into Sam and Ray. Aaaargh. Ray has been completely returned to 70s Ray as if '81 Ray had never happened, and there's absolutely no explanation for it. For me it's lost the character all credibility. Then to have him as a stalwart of the Masons? Ray? And to have managed to never mention it to Gene in all these years? For Gene to never have noticed that Ray disappeared every Lodge night? I'm sorry, it beggars belief.
But we need to be in the habit of suspending belief, right? I mean we're having to live with the idea of a 2008 copper flung back into the 1980s. Which is exactly why I think it's essential that the characters be solid and consistent. The more outrageous the situation, the more important consistent character becomes. I can bang on about it for ages. As, indeed, I am. So moving on then...
It'd also help if the crime-of-the-week plot could stand up to even the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Alex made a deductive leap that would have made Sherlock Holmes proud. Somehow, from the evidence of a Sooty puppet in one place and a Sweep puppet in the other, she cracked the case. Presumably the ingrained dirt on Sooty's right paw and the way Sweep squeaked with a marked limp gave the game away? Ack, was it really so impossible to come up with a slightly better clue than that? It's lazy writing.
I could go on about MG and AP's irritating habit of including a cause-of-the-week in their writing (Bonekickers was dogged by it), the cudgel-over-the-head approach to 80s references, the entirely unnecessary childbirth scene (another case of putting something in purely so as to put Gene Hunt in a New Man caring situation, I fear) and the fact that time would have been better spent patching that enormous plot hole, the disappointment that the uncertainty of whether Gene was bad or not has apparently been so swiftly resolved, etc etc. I could do all that, but you get the idea.
If you've got this far, you're probably thinking I hated it. Which, actually, I didn't - It's just much more fun complaining... No, no, I don't mean that. No, I liked it principally because the spark between Gene and Alex was back again, and I actually hadn't realised just how much my enjoyment of Ashes relied on that. Without, it tend to fall as flat as a three-day-old soufflé. With it, her situation of being stuck in 1982 becomes 100% more complicated and thus 100% more interesting. And they just act it so well; the chemistry works, and that's not so common a thing in television drama that you should waste it when it's there.
Then there were some cracking one liners - this week Gene's response to Alex's 'You're playing with them?' - 'No, that's just the way I'm standing' has to take the prize. For subtle reference to how times have changed (See? They can do them) I liked 'Someone hurry up and invent drag and drop'). Oh, and I chuckled at 'It wasn't exactly a letter, was it, guv? "Oxtail. Now."?' Keeley was, once again, ace; I thought she brilliantly conveyed how isolated she felt when Gene appeared to have gone over to the dark side. But it was her cheery dismissal of the 'ETA 2 minutes' message on the computer as she'd apparently forgotten who she really is that was most chilling. Backs up all those theories that they're all in the same situation, but have simply forgotten their previous lives, doesn't it...?
As for the greater mystery, I'm no further forward. I tend to over-complicate matters, so while I'd be inclined to say Gene's comment of 'Death of a Princess' over the crashed car is just another herring for the shoal of Princess Di-related fish, it'll probably turn out to be straightforwardly all connected to Diana somehow. How, I have no idea, but anyway... Dr Death had only the briefest of cameos, so not much progress there either. As for the corruption, that's giving every appearance of being as obvious as a blue whale in a goldfish bowl. It does bring up an interesting prospect though; if Gene effectively takes on the Masons, that'll put him and Ray at loggerheads. That has potential. I do hope they don't waste it.
100% entertained, 60% amused, 50% irritated, 10% confused. 4 out of five; dropped point for gaping plot hole (again), cause-of-the-week, and unnecessary childbirth with particular reference to that groanworthy link to 'Come On, Eileen'.