Ashes To Ashes
Feb. 8th, 2008 09:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloLife on Mars is the best British TV series of the new millennium. Well, maybe the Office is as good. And maybe there are other things I haven't seen which I'd rate as highly if I had, but you know what I'm trying to say.
And now here's the sequel- Ashes to Ashes. Gene Hunt and his sidekicks have moved to London and forward seven years and John Simm has been replaced by Keeley Hawes. Otherwise it's not so much a sequel as a remake. The set-up is exactly the same: a jargon-spouting modern copper has been sent back in time to work with Hunt's "armed bastards". She thinks she's in a coma and Hunt and co are figments of her imagination and all she has to do is complete certain tasks and she'll be returned to present day reality. The more or less mundane episodes of policework are interspersed with bursts of surreality. Her TV talks to her, the pierrot off Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video- a rather too obvious symbol of death- is stalking her. In a nice little twist she has read Simm's notes and knows (or thinks she knows) exactly how this parallel universe works. Because she believes Hunt to be a figment- a fictional character within a fiction- (she never speaks his name without sketching quotation marks in the air)- his character has become cartoony. He appears accompanied by orchestral crescendos, shot from below. This may over time diminish him. We'll see. It could be the writers are planning to take us some place we haven't been before- though I doubt it.
Immediately after the first episode aired I switched channels and watched the final episode of Life on Mars. It's brilliant. And- for all that there's a cunningly planted link forward to the sequel- it has an air of finality about it. Simm's character is dead- or permanently lost in time and- for him and the chums to whom he's finally committed himself- it'll always be Manchester and 1973. You want more but you know it would be greedy to ask- because everything necessary has been done and said.
Ashes to Ashes is brightly coloured where Life on Mars was drab. We get to see Hunt riding a speedboat down the Thames and firing a machine gun. The references to 80s pop culture come thick and fast. It's overblown- decadent even- but I'm not going to knock it. I miss Simm and I miss Manchester but Hunt is a great character and the concept is a great concept and-even though it's artistically unjustified- I'm happy to be offered this second serving.
And now here's the sequel- Ashes to Ashes. Gene Hunt and his sidekicks have moved to London and forward seven years and John Simm has been replaced by Keeley Hawes. Otherwise it's not so much a sequel as a remake. The set-up is exactly the same: a jargon-spouting modern copper has been sent back in time to work with Hunt's "armed bastards". She thinks she's in a coma and Hunt and co are figments of her imagination and all she has to do is complete certain tasks and she'll be returned to present day reality. The more or less mundane episodes of policework are interspersed with bursts of surreality. Her TV talks to her, the pierrot off Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video- a rather too obvious symbol of death- is stalking her. In a nice little twist she has read Simm's notes and knows (or thinks she knows) exactly how this parallel universe works. Because she believes Hunt to be a figment- a fictional character within a fiction- (she never speaks his name without sketching quotation marks in the air)- his character has become cartoony. He appears accompanied by orchestral crescendos, shot from below. This may over time diminish him. We'll see. It could be the writers are planning to take us some place we haven't been before- though I doubt it.
Immediately after the first episode aired I switched channels and watched the final episode of Life on Mars. It's brilliant. And- for all that there's a cunningly planted link forward to the sequel- it has an air of finality about it. Simm's character is dead- or permanently lost in time and- for him and the chums to whom he's finally committed himself- it'll always be Manchester and 1973. You want more but you know it would be greedy to ask- because everything necessary has been done and said.
Ashes to Ashes is brightly coloured where Life on Mars was drab. We get to see Hunt riding a speedboat down the Thames and firing a machine gun. The references to 80s pop culture come thick and fast. It's overblown- decadent even- but I'm not going to knock it. I miss Simm and I miss Manchester but Hunt is a great character and the concept is a great concept and-even though it's artistically unjustified- I'm happy to be offered this second serving.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 11:09 am (UTC)I assume it will be repeated many times on the other digital BBC offerings...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 11:37 am (UTC)Life on Mars and now Ashes to Ashes seems to have created it's own language, which my OH and a few others have started to refer to in terms of 'a Huntism', i.e. a phrase or philosophy which have or could be spoken by Gene Hunt, 'un-PC yet highly humorous dialogue.' So much so he has message tones on his phone... the present one says ' If I wanted a bollocking for drinking to much I'd phone the wife' hmmmmm
I think the line from Chris Shelton, 'I'm not nervous, I'm cautious', after he shot the bad guy last night... speaks volumes and shows how much development they may be in the other characters.
Plus the new technology was fun.. a little like the Antique Roadshow. .. in that we kept saying.... 'OoooOOooo' we had one of them!
I found a rather interesting article in the Guardian 'When Men Were Men' by John Harris:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/feb/13/genderissues.broadcasting
It discusses 70’s men, and how Gene Hunt etc was created, it will be interesting to watch and see where the 80's takes them... and how they change.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 12:28 pm (UTC)I lived in Manchester during the 70s and I don't remember it being like that. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.
I'm hoping they'll develop the characters. A romance between Hawes and Glenister seems on the cards, don't you think?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 01:19 pm (UTC)Ah, I didn't know that. I only noted that instead of creepy test-card girl and her clown, she had creepy clown and her own daughter.
I found myself a little disappointed by the fact that it's not entirely shot from Alex's POV and in one or two other things, but over all it was much better than I'd let myself anticipate.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 07:22 pm (UTC)Suspend thou thy disbelief!
And yet going into a coma and going back to 1981 - we could deal with that, somehow! The difference between magical realism and sloppy plotlines, I guess.
Glad to see Zippy's career going well, though.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 08:35 pm (UTC)Another criticism- I found the story of the unmasking of the drugs ring rushed and hard to follow, but again I don't really care. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the whole thing is a kind of fever dream.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 09:29 pm (UTC)I like British TV series so I hope that these - when they get here are better than that example of over-priced excrement.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 02:08 pm (UTC)Life on Mars is in a different class. As for Ashes to Ashes- well- we'll see.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 02:37 pm (UTC)