For the record, I must state two things before I write this review;
1)I really loved Life on Mars, especially Sam and Gene's bile-filled, witty narks at one another and the fact that each of the story lines tied into his predicament back home in 2006 and events in his childhood in some way or another.
2) I have only seen the first season of Ashes to Ashes, so it is likely I will return to review the next two once I have completed my viewing.
Now then, we can commence! Life on Mars was an innovative series, cleverly tying timey-wimey plot devices, well-written and lovable characters and brilliantly dramatic story-telling together to form one man's struggle to return to his own time. So, with a fair bit of skepticism, I began to watch Ashes to Ashes, just to resolve the whole 'was it a construct, was it limbo' dilemma in my head.
It would be a lie to say that I despise the fact that it's now Hunt's show, because placing Philip Glenister as the lead is a stroke of genius. I don't know a person alive who detests the old "overweight, over-the-hill" DCI with "an unhealthy obsession with male bonding" and a love of fast cars and kicking in nonces across the country. With him is Chris Skelton, dumb and dim-witted but enthusiastic in his work- and my favourite of the characters- and Ray Carling, still violent and thuggish but more likable this time around, along with Chris' WPC girlfriend Shaz, intelligent and sweet in her world view but not afraid to take on the sexist blokes that litter her workplace. In the place of Annie, Shaz is a worthy successor.
However, I do seem to have a persistent problem with DI Alex Hardy, mainly because I can't emote with her as I did with Sam and due to the fact that Keeley Hawes- however hard she tries- is not as good an actor in my eyes as John Simm. She's quite annoying and aggravating, in my opinion, and I can't feel any sense of jeopardy over her situation. With Sam, one felt in peril at every moment, with one episode including him coming close to death at the hands of a hostage taker and his mother turning off his life support simultaneously, but Alex hardly ever receives messages from our world, instead being haunted by a sinister clown warning her of events to come in her assumed "dreamscape." This, I feel, is truly not as effective as Sam's predicament, seeing how Alex could just be a woman from the 80s and not from 2008 at all.
The plotting is still well-done, with Gene kicking seven bells out of anyone who won't give up the goods and being constantly accompanied by an air of mighty self-importance, Chris still acting the idiot at times and Ray remaining as sexist as ever in his outlook. That's all well and good, since we've seen these characters before, but again Alex's story seems to be the weakest of the series.
Since her shooting was linked to her parents' death, she endeavours to save them from their grisly fate at the hands of a car bomb, which more than rings a few bells with me. Sam wasn't run down due to his father's illegal activities, but he still felt the pressure of saving his idol while ignoring any negative and blatantly obvious evidence suggesting that maybe Victor Tyler wasn't the nice bloke Sam suspected him to be. Caroloine Price, Alex's mother, truly is a nasty piece of work, and the writers don't hide behind the smokescreen they offered for Vic in LoM. To be honest, I can't blame the killer for blowing her up, since she comes across as a real- well, a not-very-nice person, anyway.
In short, Ashes to Ashes is not as well-crafted as LoM, at least not the first season. However, the return of Gene, Chris and Ray to joyous fanfare, as well as the addition of young Shaz, ensures that I'll continue watching despite my qualms with the character of Alex. I only hope that the plot will veer away from the template set out by LoM, since the finale of the first season felt like a slight bit of a rehash of previous events.
Fair viewing, yes, but if you exclude Alex from the mix, Ashes to Ashes is just as good as it's predecessor, even if it falls short with the first series.
