It’s Friday.  I am in need of a little eye candy.

Mrow!

Julie Benz.  You either know her from Dexter or Buffy/Angel (6 eps for Buffy/20 eps for Angel as “Darla”).  She’s been in a bunch of other stuff, (you can check her out on IMDB for a full list of TV appearances) and I’m half tempted to check out Boondock Saints 2 because she plays Special Agent Eunice Bloom.  I can’t find the link, but there’s a video clip of her online doing an interview about the role and they show a scene in the film where she’s a.) a bitch and b.) a real gun slinger.  Totally hot.  Something about a chick with a gun.

Speaking of a chick with a gun…

Detective Rush

Kathryn Morris.  FYI, I only like her up to Season 4.  After that she loses about 40 lbs and looks really sickly and thin and less attractive.  Kinda like she’d turn to pink dust if you hugged her too hard.  Still, she could haul me in for questioning any time!

Speaking of coppers…

On the Left...

No, not the angry cougar on the right hand side.  The hottie on the left.  That’s Liz White portraying Annie Cartwright on the UK version (and clearly the superior version) of “Life on Mars”.  She’s not technically a cop, she’s a WPC.  It’s about all women could do via the police force in the 70’s in Britain.  Great show, check it out.  Don’t go by the TERRIBLE Americanized version.  (And let’s get one thing clear, I have no qualms with cougars.  Hot ones, anyway.  Cougars need love too.  Hot cougars.)

Speaking of British Babes…

Detective Alex Drake

This is Keeley Hawes (voice of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider video games).  She’s Detective Alex Drake in the “Life on Mars” spin-off, “Ashes to Ashes” which takes place in the ’80s.  There are some really great photos of her she did when she was younger in bondage and various stages of undress.  I’d post em, but I’m at work.  Maybe later.  Anyway…fantastic actress and not hard to look at either.  Another great series out of the UK.

Clearly, I have a thing for powerful women.

Ray’s got a cold…surely only real people get ill? Then Chris gets caught in a goal net. My feeling watching this was that perhaps the team are all patients experiencing trauma. The feeling dissipated later in the episode when Ray was revealed to be skiving off work!

Sam thinks Gene is jumping to a lazy conclusion that a Manchester City fan has been killed by a Red. Gene informs Sam that he doesn’t know the city like he does. Which city? Gene knows Sam is from Manchester…

Chicken in a basket. I love the disgusted reaction to something that will become the epitome of alcohol fuelled dining a few short years later. This is assuming that their reaction is fear of the unknown rather than weariness of a product they’ve already endured…

“I’m not sure that’s ethical…”
“No, it’s not, it’s vodka.”

Gene pretending to be pissed, not as neanderthal as he seems? Especially when he drinks so much in order to pretend to be pissed that he ends up…very pissed indeed. This is interesting as it’s one of the few times where Gene isn’t in control.

Sam isn’t wearing aftershave but Annie smells something…some kind of medication from the real world?

Sam sees his younger self going to the football with his dad. Did he need to find the killer in order to see that happen? He looks his younger self full in the face which he then avoids later in the series.

Alex, similarly, won’t make eye contact with her younger self. Did Sam tell her about this first meeting? Did she miss a vital clue about her parents’ demise by avoiding this confrontation? Sam solves his personal demon – his father’s disappearance – by dealing with the situation more directly.

Is this what Caroline Price is trying to say when she returns in a dream sequence in series 2?

New pictures of Keeley and Philip filming the first two episodes of Ashes to Ashes series 3 are on contactmusic.

Keeley Hawes

Philip Glenister

Alex’s new hair is very 1983, I can remember older girls wearing it in that exact style. The rest of the outfit isn’t giving much away.

I don’t think any of them are stills but in a few, it looks like Gene could be lurking. Maybe he’s on the run and can’t emerge until he knows that Alex survives? Just a thought.

A tipsy Keeley and Phil confirmed that A2A3 will be set in 1983, at Monday’s TV Quick awards in an interview with Digital Spy.

I think we already pretty much knew or assumed this, but of course this helps narrow down the speculation as to how the events of the last episode of Series 2 will be tied up.

Possible episode 301 intros:

• Alex waking from her coma
• Alex already recovered and business as usual
• Alex dying in 2008 and returning to 1983

On the Series 2 DVD, a producer comments on that final scene as ‘Alex’s death’? Slip of the tongue or deliberate?

Maybe the music they mention offers a clue?

Wham in 83 – Club tropicana, Bad boys

Billy Joel in 83 – Uptown girl, Tell her about it, An innocent man

Duran Duran in 83 – Is there something I should know, Union of the snake

Spandau Ballet in 83 – True, Gold and a couple of others I’ve never heard of

Of these, I’m guessing An Innocent Man fits with the situation we left in A2A 208.

I would so love to see Chris and Ray up to their usual against a musical backdrop of Bad Boys…

Being a sad dork big fan of Ashes to Ashes, I was a little perturbed to check out Alex Drake’s new series hair-cut. WTF BBC?

So to recap, Alex had an amazing, improbable perm in series 1

Unfortunately, by series 2 Alex has transmetamorphosensationalised into a soccer mom

BBC has had a look under the couch and come up with the spare change to make series 3 of A2A. Please just buy Alex the best perm wig money can buy. I will donate my kid’s hair … anything but the wing tips again.

I have to confess, here and now, when I should be a) revising or b) writing a fashion blog, that I am going to do neither for the next ten minutes. Instead, I am going to indulge you all in a little fan-geek-ery, something that I am sure you will all grow to be very thankful for in the near-future.

Well, ok, maybe not.

But humor me for now, alright? Because, seriously, I am sick to death of Stalin and New Economic Policies, and Practise Source Questions, and being objective.

And, this is, after all, my blog. So I’ll be an Ashes to Ashes geek if I want to…

Yes, I know that at seventeen, I am far too young to be able to fully appreciate A 2 A. My parents watch it for the clothes and the memories and the music. I watch it for the utterly rubbishly brilliant plot-lines, and because I have nothing better to do on Monday nights after too much revision and too many exams. But, I do get far too into it. I actually had to be physically restrained from jumping up and down on the sofa last week! It’s terrible, I know, but I love it!

And, what is potentially the last ever episode airs tomorrow night at 9 on BBC1 and BBCHD (does anyone actually watch that channel?), so leave me to my geek-ery in peace, if you don’t like it…

Obviously, my geek-ery for the day will come from, you guessed it, deviantArt… with a small input from fanfiction.net, too, the home of geeks the world over…. ah, internet forums, what did geeks ever do without you? *Sigh*

So. Here goes. If you don’t like it, you have been warned…

——————————————

(Oh my gosh. I have just discoverred that I can type in colour on this site!!! EEP! SO EXCITED NOW!!!)

Ahem.

—————————————–

Ashes to Ashes.

The end is nigh…

A celebration of the utter wonderfulness of Gene Genie Hunt, the Lion of Fenchurch East, and Alex “Bolly Knickers” Drake.

I am going to point out now, before someone else does, that YES A2A is sexist and that Gene Hunt is a chauvinist pig. But it is set in the 80s. The 80s were (probably) like that. Besides; it is all a front. He is really a very nice man in disguise.
Promise.

–*–

©2008-2009 ~quite-possibly

The invincibles…
I am growing to love Alex’s jacket more and more every week.
Yes please!

©2008-2009 ~PhantomMisdo

Ah, you gotta love that girl’s determination to get home…
But will she?!

©2008-2009 ~genexalex-club

My mother’s favourite thing to say during these shows;
“Can’t she pull her top up? Her bra-straps are showing!”
*Rolls eyes*

©2008-2009 ~genexalex-club

I love this one for the sheer “wtf?” factor…
No, really.
WTF?!

©2008-2009 ~Nullus

I adore this one! It’s Chris, with a tiny Shaz toy…
And it is sooooooo cute!

©2008-2009 =Loser-Kid05

And this one is just so… raaaaandom!
But kind of cool! Click the (c) link and see it big sized…

And to the fan-fics…

This is a link to all the A2A fics on FF.net:
http://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Ashes_to_Ashes

Some favourites are…

No interruptions

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5057348/1/No_Interruptions

The lady doth protest too much

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5056905/1/The_Lady_Doth_Protest_Too_Much

Decisions and Choices

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5039132/1/Decisions_and_Choices

Yes. They are all cheesy and romance-y, but they’re either fabulously written or have lovely plots.
Besides, the script writers keep putting in all those hints, and nothing comes of it.
The geeks need to be cheered up some-how!

———————–

Ok, geek-ery over.

I will  do a proper blog, about what this blog is supoosed to be about, soon.

Honest!

Lovee xx

Follow my blog with bloglovin´

Where to start? There was so much to take in that I’ve only just got to writing up my thoughts on the first episode of the new series of Ashes to Ashes.

I’m going to focus on the things that may turn out to be significant.

Hospital scene

Only an hour has passed since Alex was shot. I think this means that a year in 1982 equates to an hour in 2008. I’m reasonably convinced, due to the presence of the 4th generation ipod, that the person in the hospital bed is Sam. This could mean that Sam remained in a coma after his leap in 2007.

Grange Hill

If Molly is in Grange Hill in 1982, does this mean she is also in 1982? The credit for Brian Capron could be significant. As far as I remember, the younger cast used to be credited before the teachers.

The stripper from Hyde

I think the reappearance of Hyde journalist Jackie McQueen later in the series will either reveal the mystery surrounding Gene’s ex-wife or what happened to Sam. I saw the figure in the background, and I know Kevin Hales admitted to killing Sally, along with his friend, but…I’ve rewatched the way she was shot. A moment before, Alex hears the air ambulance sirens from 2008 and looks into the light, then Sally is shot. It looks odd…my first instinct was that Sally caught a bullet, or was impacted, by something from 2008.

Dr Death

As far as we know, the only other person to time travel was Sam. I would like Sam to return, but wonder why he is so hostile to Alex? Assuming that she refused to believe him whilst he described travelling back to 1973, maybe he is angry that she is now inhabiting his world. The coma he fell into after jumping off the roof in 2007, could have finally come back to claim him in 1980. But since his body was never found, perhaps he was only being temporarily held in limbo.

Diana

I wonder if this might just be a way of indicating that the mysterious stalker knows about the future. It would probably be one of the most shocking things to tell someone in 1982. Note that in the final scene the stalker says he was holding back the grieving hordes at her funeral in 1997. Sam was in the force, and higher ranking police from across the country were probably deployed to London that day…

Enjoyed the first episode in the new eight part second series which has returned to the BBC.  Series one was one of my favourite TV shows last year. Hard to say why I like it as I have little interest in police dramas usually. I just love the depiction of the 1980s. That decade has so much resonance and seems so formative. The attention to detail in the series is great – seeing all those reminders of that decade – also the music.

The sexual chemistry between the two main characters – Alex Drake (aka ‘Bolly Knickers’) played by Keeley Hawes and Gene Hunt (aka Phil Glenister) appears to be toned down somewhat. The rest of the cast are all still there which is good.

No sign of the David Bowie ‘Ashes to Ashes clown’ so far – which haunted her throughout the last series. Instead, she hears voices spoken through random people and even a police dog!

What looks to be a recurrent theme throughout the series is police corruption (at senior levels of the Met police). I imagine that was fairly rife back then but I don’t know that for sure.

I really do quite like Keeley Hawes. Thought she was fantastic in Spooks as well.

Watch series 2 episode 1 again on BBC iPlayer.

Incidentally – the only other police drama that I really did enjoy very much indeed – was Wallander which aired last year for three episodes. I really, really would like to see more of that; it was brilliant.

The second series of Ashes To Ashes kicks off on BBC tonight, and it’s fair to say that I’ll probably end up watching it. But not necessarily enjoying – I hated the first series. After an epic end to Life On Mars the creators decided to drag back the characters (well, minus Sam Tyler) and try to do it all over again. The only problem was, they’ve removed almost everything that was great last time around.

Please ignore the quote of the front of DVD box-set. Ashes To Ashes is not better than Life On Mars. Take a look at the back of the Spider-man 3 DVD. You’ll see a belter of a quote from Mr Jonathan Ross – “This is Spidey’s best adventure yet.” It just goes to show that these quotes mean bugger all. Let’s move on. What makes Ashes To Ashes so bloody terrible?

First of all – the main character. Sam Tyler has been replaced with an annoying, stuck-up woman called [Note: I had to look this up. Really shows the kind of impact the character made doesn't it?] Alex Drake. So instead of an interesting character dynamic between Tyler and Gene Hunt as they battle to out-do the other whilst solving the crime, we get a corny love story in which nothing of any real interest happens. It’s just a scene per episode of sexual tension. Maybe this would be OK if the main character was remotely likeable, but she isn’t. I would hope she’s killed off in the first episode of the new series – it might make the remaining episodes a bit better.

Alex Drake is a trained police psychologist studying Sam Tyler’s suicide. OK, we all know he jumped off a building to return back to his fantasy world in 1973, but what happened to him in that world? Is he still alive? No. “Dead”, Ray tells us. And let me guess… his body was never found? What a fantastically written ending. But I’ll let that slide – you never know, more may become of this in series 2.

And now to the rest of the characters. Gene Hunt, who was utterly brilliant in Life On Mars is a shadow of his former self. He just doesn’t have the same spark this time around. Ray has gone from the moody, bullying rival to a curly head fool, and Chris would be fine, it it wasn’t for his relationship with “Shaz” Granger – which is almost has unbearable as Drake and Hunt’s. Even the weird-ass clown that follows Drake about isn’t a chilling as the little girl that haunts Sam Tyler.

The storylines, whilst not horrible, aren’t anything worth shouting about. In fact – I can’t really remember what happens in specific episodes. Whether that is a result of poor memory or poor writing is your call. But the main story revolves around Drake’s attempt to save her parents, who are killed in a car explosion when Drake was a child. Drake survived as she gets out of the car moments before in an attempt to retrieve a balloon. Yes. It’s as ridiculous to watch as it is to read. Throughout the series Drake has flashbacks to the balloon, very similar to Tyler’s flashbacks of a woman in red being chased through the forest. Do you see a pattern forming here? Admittedly – I didn’t see the final twist coming (which I won’t ruin for you), so the writers do earn some points there. Reluctantly.

All in all – the whole thing was so disappointing when you consider how brilliant Life On Mars was. If you’ve never seen the original you might enjoy this. But for everyone else, watch only with your standard for enjoyment set considerably lower.

Really very much looking forward to this. Series 2 premieres on BBC1 next Monday 20th April at 9pm. I really did enjoy the first series which aired last year.

As mentioned at the time, I don’t watch cop shows normally. I have little to no interest. But it’s the depiction of the 1980s, a decade hot-wired into my brain for reasons I’ve never quite been able to grasp. Just something about that era. The music. The things that happened. Extremely formative years for me (I was born in 1976) and I do see myself as a child of the 80s.

PS The (somewhat underwhelming) trailer doesn’t really do the series justice in my opinion!

I can’t wait for the new series of Ashes to Ashes, and can’t help but wonder if we might get the big reveal in this series, even though a third is slated.

If Philip Glenister sticks to his vow not to sign another contract beyond the third series, they might want to use this to tie in with the inevitable 90s revival due to kick off in 2010. That isn’t a complaint by the way, I’m a 90s girl. I would love to see Gene attempt to interact, perhaps relocated back to Manchester, with loved up ravers who refuse to fight back.

So, I believe we may find out what is ‘real’ and Alex’s fate at the end of the upcoming series. So what are the possible outcomes and reveals?

Tim Price wasn’t Alex’s biological father

I’ve long speculated that either Gene or Evan will be revealed as Alex’s dad. This was brought into focus by the fact that Tim Price was so willing to end her life along with his own and Caroline’s. If Tim is Alex’s father, I think at least, there will be a brother or sister she didn’t know about.

We already know that Caroline and Evan had an affair, who knows how far back that stretched? Is it the reason he got the job in their legal practice in the first place? Why was he at the prison on the day that Layton was released?

And then there’s Gene. He has a somewhat acidic relationship with Caroline. Why? Is it just a genuine mutual dislike due to their respective roles and beliefs or does it go deeper than that? Thin line between love and hate. Maybe we will find out that Caroline was located in Manchester at some point. I think Alex was eight years old in 1981, which means that she was born during Life on Mars, in 1973…

Alex’s fate is inextricably linked to Life on Mars

We know that a character from Life on Mars not featured in the first series will resurface in the second. Who? Smart money is probably on Annie. Is it possible that Sam will be revealed to be Alex’s real father? Could that be the reason that Annie didn’t relocate to London with the rest of the team, at the outset? What would that mean for her life back in 2008/9, given that he wasn’t ‘real’ in 1973?

And how would the writers explain all this without our heads exploding…

Molly’s dad has something to do with this

I can’t discount the mysterious Mr Drake.  We don’t know for sure that he is a similar age to Alex. Taking into account that they had a child 15 years later, when Alex was still in her early 20s, this might suggest he is already an adult in 1982. Alex may meet him and find out things she didn’t know about him the first time they met in the 90s.

Alex’s ex has been deliberately omitted from the story to date, much like Gene’s wife. I think we’ll find out more about both and it will be significant.

Someone else who isn’t from 1982

It could either be the new character, team recruit ‘Supermac’, or Shaz. But, series 2 episode summaries refer to a ‘mysterious stranger’ who knows that she is not from 1982. Assuming she has seen this person and not just received a letter from them - hey, it is 1982 - it can’t be Sam. She knows who Sam is as she was his psychologist upon his return.

Arthur Layton is not what he seems

Or rather, not just what he seems. In the first episode he is talking to someone on the phone who is part of Alex’s past. I’m assuming the person he is blackmailing is someone who knows that Tim commissioned the tape bomb, but has let Layton rot in jail for 27 years.

I can’t quite see Layton becoming a sympathetic character in any way, even if he does play a bigger role.  In Life on Mars, Sam came face to face with a criminal from 2008 and prevented him from carrying out future attacks by convincing everyone that he was insane. Could this character reappear, or the reverse scenario play itself out with Layton? If Layton is released in 1981 and stays out of prison, does that mean he has no need to shoot Alex in 2008?

Molly may not dictate the outcome

Most speculation has concluded that Alex must return to 2009 as she has a daughter. If Molly either joined her in 1982, went elsewhere herself or just wasn’t there anymore, this would be a way around it. Pesky kids, eh?

I will update as we go along…only12 days to go now!

“Slurp! Sloo!” – Gene Hunt, yesterday.

Ashes To Ashes, the sequel to time-tripping cop show Life On Mars is on it’s way to America. That’s the BBC sequel to the BBC Life On Mars, not to be confused with the American remake from ABC that is half-way through its first season Stateside.

And while promoting the show, co-creator Ashley Pharoah and star Gene Hunt himself, aka actor Philip Glenister, dropped a few hints about the future and the mythology of both the BBC and ABC versions of the franchise. 

While Life On Mars, which ran for two seasons on BBC1, shifted current-day cop Sam Tyler (John Simm) to 1973 Manchester, where he finds himself teamed up with politically incorrect old-school “beat a confession out of them” Gene Hunt, Ashes To Ashes finds another current -day cop time shifted and teamed up with the Gene-Genie.

This time, however, the displaced officer is a woman - police psychologist Alex Drake (played by Keeley Hawes) – who had been studying the Sam Tyler case - and the location is 1981 London.

With the second season of Ashes To Ashes set to begin on BBC1 in March, BBC America will start airing the first season on Saturday, March 7.

It’s already been well recorded that while the US version of Life On Mars is following the storyline of the BBC original very closely, the ultimate pay-off to the show, the explanation for what is happening to Sam Tyler, will be very different from the ending to the BBC Life On Mars.

But Pharoah teased us with a little more information of what the future holds for the two versions of the show:

He said (regarding the BBC series): ”Right from the start, we knew how we wanted to end it when finally the whole franchise comes to an end.

“We’ve got a terrific ending, I think. Very different from the American Life on Mars. We swapped endings drunk in a Manhattan bar, so I know theirs, and they know mine.”

Asked whether there may be another sequel, with someone else transplanted in time, when Ashes To Ashes ends, Pharoah said: “Never say never but I really would be amazed.

“[Season two of Ashes] is about to go out in March [on BBC1], and if that does well enough to give us a next [season], two Life on Mars and three Ashes would be a five-year journey. It’s been a wonderful journey, [but] I think we would probably say thank you very much and bow out.”

Whether the US version of Life On Mars will continue in the 70s or spin off into its own version of Ashes To Ashes remains to be seen and will no doubt depend heavily on the ratings when the show returns from its mid-season break on January 28, after it was moved to Wednesday night to partnet up with ABC’s other time-shift fantasy, Lost.

You can read SciFi Wire’s full report of the Q&A with Pharoah and Glenister here.

i didn’t watch ‘life on mars’. it was set in 1973 and well, i wasn’t born then and i’d heard, after the first few episodes, that the nostalgia played a big part in the experience. (I’ve since watched it and LOVE it, and john simm is amazing).

so when i heard about ‘ashes to ashes’ the 80s sequel, i decided that i would watch this time. now it’s set in 1981, and my memories of that year are mostly confined to button moon and hazy royal wedding memories, but it’s interesting to see how people actually lived like that in my lifetime.

the scenes in the new romantic hangout, the blitz club were an eyeopener. i thought the 90s club scene was so different that bar studio 54, clubland had previously been about carpeted walls, disco lights and mirrors. no edge, nothing extraordinary,no innovation. i was SO wrong. the music makes more sense now – i used to wonder how people ever danced to new wave but i get it now. 1981 looks bleak, but it was also real, and probably felt like being on a rollercoaster. I think the blitz eventually became the gardening club, in covent garden.

i would have liked to hear these tracks from 1981 in the show. plus the roxy music track which was the outro to episode one - it took me until last week to figure out what it was.

so what for the next series? can’t believe we have to wait till 2009…

download here

abc – poison arrow

chaka khan - i know you, i live you

grace jones – pull up to the bumper

haircut 100 – love plus one

hall and oates – rich girl

human league – don’t you want me

kraftwerk – the model

level 42 – love games

police – every little thing she does is magic

odyssey – inside out

roxy music – same old scene

scritti politti – sweetest girl

Ashes to Ashes 1.03

Ashes to Ashes continues, hitting many of the same notes as Sam’s stint in Gene Hunt’s world.  Since the pilot, Alex has reliably featured moments of headdesking stupidity in the presence of her mother and her mother’s law firm partner (in 2008, the godfather of her daughter).  Abandoning her ‘you are all figments’ stance, she alternates between amazed gawping and craven attempts to elicit approval.  Rather than backing away slowly from the crazy woman, they offer brief but meaningful insights into their perspectives that inadvertently guide Alex through her hallucinatory new world.  Again like Sam, the gang surprisingly takes her lapses of cranial continence in stride while being horrified by her minor futuristic faux pas…but I suppose without this contractual genre blindness (or just plot-induced stupidity?), the show would be called Special Woman Is Instantly Institutionalised and Spends Thirteen Episodes Heavily Sedated.

Still, it bugs me.  Almost as much as Alex’s club-appropriate workwear, set in a time when a female professional, let alone a detective, would have been strapped into restrictive chin-to-knees pseudo-Victorian armor, heavily featuring those awful high-necked blouses with sewn-in bows and boxy pleated wool skirts.  A few years later, she’d be clad in a solid-color power suit with shoulder pads up to her ears.  Professional specifically did not equal sexy, outside of fetishes similar to those surrounding schoolgirl uniforms (and bearing as much relation to the reality).  A white-collar female was an impenetrable tank.

Despite this incongruity, the show is starting to play with a more complex morality.  Along the lines of the impenetrable tank…after subtly hitting on Gene and being shot down, Alex lets herself be picked up by a red suspender wearing Thatcherite, who she drunkenly boffs to the energetic beats of Bucks Fizz.  Her coworkers start out teasing her when she drags herself into work the following day, hungover and exhausted, but she reacts the way a modern woman working in a chauvinist environment should: yes, I’m dead tired because I was up all night shagging a total stranger, and it was bloody fantastic.  No shame, no cringing, just one of the boys.

Unfortunately…1981 wasn’t quite modern enough for that, or at least for these blokes.  No matter what Aaron Spelling and his Starsky & Hutch taught us in the late 70s, a confident, pretty woman interested in getting laid wasn’t a great girl but someone who should be far more discrete.  The men are uncomfortable, Gene is furious and offering the hard truth that she won’t be respected if she’s known to have sex—part advice for someone working beneath him who needs the respect of his crew, part fury that a woman who’d made herself ‘his’ in some vague but definite way by hitting on him had flipped over to someone who wouldn’t look after her.

This is set in an episode focusing on prostitutes, specifically whether one can be raped, as she claims.  Gene & Co display the sentiments that continue to linger in many minds today—prostitutes, as people who sell their bodies for sex, cease to be properly human.  A woman who doesn’t strenuously resist having sex with men, let alone chasing them for her own pleasure, becomes something closer to a prostitute.  These aren’t rational preconceptions, by any means, but divisions usually instilled before a child hits puberty and are rarely challenged.

Ray, however, possibly the thickest member of Gene’s squad, does rise to the challenge.  He befriends a traumatised young woman and, while he’s obviously disturbed by her revelation that she’s a ‘lady of the night,’ it leads him to the second moral quandary of the episode—framing the man who raped and assaulted her for cocaine possession.  Ray is now unable to accept that a man could go unpunished for violating just a prostitute, and betrays the law he is sworn to uphold in a satisfying but disturbing way.

Even more jolting, this takes place during the denouement, and Alex and the police watching the rapist being arrested on an obviously bogus drug possession charge applaud and congratulate Ray.  None of them acknowledges Ray’s legal violation or suggests there was a better, legal way to go after him—ideally by following the bugger and establishing relationships with the local prostitutes to catch him repeating his crime, rather than bunging him up on a charge that will likely fall apart in court.

This department feels that, together, they can answer to a higher morality than the law when the law fails them.  What terrifying disaster awaits this crew of celibate ersatz Dark Knights if they continue to follow this ‘higher’ calling?

Al principio era reacio a este spin-off de Life On Mars. Pero puse el primer capitulo para echarle un ojo y fue comenzar el capitulo oyendo la frase de :

” Me llamo Sam Tyler.Tuve un accidente y me he despertado en 1973. ¿Me he vuelto loco?¿Estoy en coma?O he viajado en el tiempo?
Sea lo que sea, es como si hubiera aterrizado en un planeta diferente.
Si pudiera averiguar por qué estoy aquí lo mejor podría volver a casa.”

A partir de ahí ay estaba enganchado otra vez. La serie no es mala pero es cierto que la protagonista Alex Drake no es Sam Tayler y se nota, espero que en los próximos capítulos mejore.

Gene Hunt como siempre magnifico. El único detalle que no me convence es que la ambientación de los años 70 me gustaba mas que la de los 80.

Si os gusto Life On Mars os recomiendo su secuela.

Ashes to Ashes:1.01
2008

The spin-off from the acclaimed (if sometimes excruciating) Life on Mars is self-consciously extreme, with both the drama and dark humor ratcheted up to the appropriate 80s excess.  This year’s timetraveller-slash-madman is DI Alex Drake, a police psychiatrist and single mother who has been investigating the suicide of Sam Tyler.  Familiar with Sam’s fantasy world and characters that suddenly surround her after being shot in the face by druglord-cum-vagrant Arthur Layton, she believes she’s having an elaborate hallucination in the seconds before she dies, but still fights to wake up from it and return to her demanding, impulsive daughter.

Ray Carling, who BBC informs us is now “The Bear,” tells her with regret that her acquaintance Sam Tyler died with the 70s a year earlier, crashing his car into a river after leaving Gene behind on a police chase.  His body was never found, allowing speculation on his Schrödingeresque state to rampage on.  He tells Alex that they key to surviving is to stay with Gene, not only expressing his own philosophy of life but possibly offering a key to why the two officers have been drawn back into the past.

The pilot was a conscious retread of the Life on Mars pilot.  Set-up of current life in the present, spotlighting the few personal connections?  Check.  Introductory Make Ass Of Self scene?  Check.  Enigmatic flashbacks in old-film filter?  Check.  Parent issues centring around that year?  Check.  There’s even similar avatars of hostile knowledge in the form of different childhood icons (which, lacking a UK childhood, had no more significance to me than ‘sort of like Sesame Street’ and ‘some freaky Euro-clown’).  The subject is partly aware of this reality—or only thinks she is—and seeks out the missing signifiers from Sam’s reports.  Unfortunately, phones, radios, and tvs give her nothing; her only communications come in dreams and visions.

Most of the direct communication from the hostile avatars in fact goes over her head, couched in subtle visuals only the viewers see—such as the clown’s head on a shelf in Layton’s junk store, or its reflection looming over her shoulder in a shiny interview table.  While Life on Mars followed Sam’s point of view, DI Drake of more an active object of the mystery than an identification figure.  The audience has more pieces of the puzzle.

Alex thus far seems to be a less sympathetic character than Sam, but a more confident timetraveler-slash-madman, hopefully less likely to likely to commit the forehead-smackingly boneheaded moves that Tyler’s run included at least once per episode.  Instead of acting generally unhinged in a manner that would leave most professionals escorted by security carrying a box of personal belongings, Alex calmly treats the others as both people and figments in turn and with equal sangfroid expects to be treated with respect while stuck wearing uncomfortably revealing clothes.  She also gains a few points by getting drunk with the team and groping Gene on her very first night in the past, thus ensuring they’ll overlook a greater proportion of weird behaviour than if she’d remained in the remote and dismissive pose Sam initially chose.

This spinoff so far seems to retain the parent show’s flaws, particularly in the imbalanced drama/comedy tone.  Particularly, scenes and setups still misfire as often as they catch.  The “A-Team”’s emergence in the gunfight via speedboat with machine guns, while a good visual gag, destroys the delicate dream vs time-travel question.  That could only be a modern person’s fantasy moment.  When scenes catch, though, they really really catch.  When Ray tells of Sam’s death, he is a man more comfortable with his place in life than the resentful demoted DI of the earlier decade.  Gene’s frustration while on the phone to his superior shows a big man who’s time has passed, and knows it.  And entire shows could take place in their new hangout, a wine bar where a long-suffering Magical Italian possibly takes Nelson’s place as the wise bartender.

There is one unbearable bit, though.  I don’t know how I’ll get through a season of an entire cast in those terrible pleated trousers and white jeans.  For the love of Oxford Street, let no lazy designers take those on as this fall’s new look!

I’m writing this now because I’m using it as a delaying tactic.  I have just been reading an article about Derek Jarman, who is about to be remembered (some of us never forgot), in a new exhibition at the Serpentine in London.  Derek Jarman is one of my all time favourite people ever.  I am very excited about the exhibition, and am trying to plan a way that I can shoehorn a day in London into my schedule without anyone noticing. 

I did think about going in half term and taking the children, but I’m not sure how it would go.  Sometimes they’re utterly brilliant and really get into things like that.  Other times they whinge and moan a lot and demand to be entertained.  It’s a fine line, and frankly it could go either way.  I don’t think I dare risk it, as if I go all that way to worship at the feet of Derek and they throw a massive wobbler, I would be forced to kill them stone dead.  It would be awful to be arrested in an art gallery.  Derek would probably approve, but my mother would be really cross, and she’d be the one stumping up the bail money.  I suppose I could claim it was a performance piece, but I don’t think anyone would buy it.

I was also reading about some of his films and have now filled my Amazon shopping cart to the brim.  This is a bad thing, and so I thought I would mosey along to the blog to try and talk myself out of pressing the ‘Oohh! Yes! Buy! Buy! Buy!’ button.  It might work.  And then again it might not.  I’ve had a bad morning.  I woke up with sinusitis again, and then spent forty minutes in Tilly’s school assembly waiting for them to award her with a merit certificate, only to find they had cocked it up and despite the glowing letter of recommendation they sent me, they had forgotten her award. 

I spent forty minutes, forty minutes, of my precious life watching other children being patronised to death by the new head mistress who had a very overbearing bosom, a ridiculous turn of phrase and a penchant for wearing what looks like a dead fox around her neck.  I was not impressed.  When such things happen I immediately reach for the solace of Amazon.  I can feel my finger twitching over the ‘buy’ button even as we speak.

Talking of dead foxes, I may have mentioned this before, but what the hell.  When I was very small we went on holiday to the seaside and my parents took me into an antique shop, as is their wont.  I fell in love with a fox fur stole.  It still had its head, legs and tail, and was dyed black.  It had beady glass eyes and a hard little snout, and I loved it.  I kicked up such a fuss, that for some bizarre reason my parents caved in and bought it for me (why they never did that with the Sindy Swimming Pool, which I would have much preferred, I don’t know).  Anyway, I called it Ferdinand, and I wore it for months on end, driving my parents bonkers because they had an eccentric child with a dead fox round her neck to cart around with them everywhere.  It’s hard to explain to people, even with the best will in the world.  Thank goodness PETA had never got as far as our small village by then.  I’d have been strung up on the village green as an example.

Eventually, as you do, I got bored of Ferdinand.  I remember cutting his paws off and using them for pillows in my dolls house beds.  It was macabre but very practical.  I don’t know what happened to the rest of him.  I expect once my mother saw the mutilation in progress she swiftly dumped him in the dustbin, worried about what uses I would put the rest of him to.  Thinking about it, it’s very odd, because I recall winning a furry monkey from the fairground at one point after Ferdinand’s demise.  It was a bit of rabbit fur stapled to a bit of foam, with a plastic monkey’s face on the end.  It was truly hideous, and naturally, I absolutely adored it.  I used to love the feel of the fur against my face, and would spend hours snuggling cheek to cheek with the creature. 

My mother decided it was unhygienic.  She went out and bought a Paddington Bear, bear, and offered me a trade off, bear for monkey.  I eventually caved, after many misgivings, and she threw the monkey in the bin.  I was devastated, and sobbed that I had changed my mind, but the lady was not for turning.  She said that she was very pleased she had got rid of it because it was nasty and unsanitary.  Why she didn’t say that about the very, very old dead fox that I’d been wearing round my neck for months on end, is a mystery.  I must ask her about it.  It smacks of double standards to me…

Anyway, to get back to the world of Derek.  The problem with Derek’s films is that they are very obscure and very ‘arty’, so they don’t get shown on terrestrial television very often.  They are often quite rude and a bit too ‘gaytastic’ for some as well.  It doesn’t bother me, I’m all for it, but people like foxy headmistress would be bound to get upset about such things, so I have to wait for three years and then remember to set the Sky Plus for half four in the morning if I want to catch one of his films.  I can just see it now.  Me and a load of gay men in silk dressing gowns and bed socks, propping our eyelids open and waiting with horlicks in hand, all for a peek at the majesty of Derek.  Maybe we could form a society of which I could be an honorary member.  Give it a few years until I start limbering up for the menopause and I’m sure I’ll be able to grow a handle bar moustache.  I wonder if I’m a gay man trapped inside a middle aged woman’s body?  That would work…

Sky Arts screened Wittgenstein a few months ago, which was excellent, but such things are as rare as hens’ teeth.  With the retrospective coming up, and a new documentary narrated by Tilda Swinton being shown on More 4 on February 19th, there is a chance they might show some of his other stuff, so maybe it would be politic to wait and see if I can record some stuff before I spend the life savings I don’t have on films that nobody else but me will want to watch!  It’s a lonely life when two of your all time super heroes are Derek Jarman and Julian Cope.  It’s never dull though.

My main filmic desire is for a DVD copy of Blue, his final film.  I had a copy on video, but don’t own a video recorder any more.  Actually, what would be best would be a sound recording, but there isn’t one.  I’ve checked.  It’s the most amazing thing.  It’s a film which is just a bright blue screen, with voices, nothing else.  It’s so moving and brilliant I can’t quite describe it.  Jarman had aids, and as he was dying he began to lose his sight, which for an artist and film maker was devastating.  Blue is his last film, and celebrates his life and what colour means, and what it means to die.  It’s wonderful.

Jason is horrified that I could even contemplate watching such a thing.  He thought Nick Hornby’s ‘About A Boy’ was too arty and pretentious, so I haven’t even broached the subject of Derek yet.  I think the main problem Jason would have with Blue is that there aren’t enough ninjas in it!  The car chases are quite few and far between as well.  Action is not one of its strong points to be fair.  My dad would naturally be concerned about the fact that it is too wordy!

Anyway.  I shall move swiftly on and try to distract myself with other things.  I must just comment on more stuff from televisionland.  Jason and I watched Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the spectacularly brilliant Life on Mars last night.  Hmmmm! Is what I have to say.  It’s a bit weird.  I think it might all go horribly wrong, but I’m afraid I shall have to keep watching because Gene Hunt is still utterly brilliant, even if he is being very self conscious about it this time around.  For those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, here’s a run down.

Basically, in Life on Mars, the great and glorious John Simm played a detective called Sam Tyler, who was involved in a hideous accident.  This accident puts him into a coma.  He ‘wakes up’ in 1974 (or 73, can’t quite remember the year), remembering who he is, but not having a clue why he is suddenly in the early seventies.  Everyone in the seventies seems to be expecting him, and nobody but him thinks he is out of place.  He can’t work out whether he’s dead, whether he’s in a coma induced trauma state, or whether he has actually travelled back in time.  He joins forces with the Maverick cop ‘Gene Hunt’ played by Philip ‘I’m ‘avin ‘oops’ Glenister, and television genius is made.  This programme lasted for two series and was totally brilliant, but ended very definitely.

Because it was so brilliant, the writers have resurrected it, which is a bit worrying.  Keeley Hawes plays the modern detective, Alex Drake, who is a psychologist.  She gets shot in a hostage situation and wakes up in 1982 to meet Gene Hunt who has now been seconded to London, and is battling coke lords to the sounds of New Romantic pop madness.  She knows what’s going on, because she has Sam’s transcripts of his experiences, but doesn’t know how to get home.

Bits of it were very funny, and there were several horrendous eighties flash backs that were part nostalgia, part terror, but it’s all a bit too knowing.  One good thing is that where Mars was very Sweeney’esque, this is a great parody of Miami Vice set in London’s squalor, and instead of the sleek Don Johnson with his mauve t-shirts and espadrilles you’ve got burly northerners with Kevin Keegan perms shouting about being ‘armed bastards!’  That works quite well.  I think Don Johnson may have been more credible if he’d had a Kevin Keegan perm, or maybe not…

So, that’s about it really.  I have to spend the rest of the day avoiding buying things and trying to get to grips with more Shakespeare.  I have already had three cups of coffee and a biscuit boost with added guarana (always makes me think of bat pooh), so you think I’d be dancing about on the ceiling by now.  As it is, I can hardly keep my eyes open.  If I hadn’t had those things I’d probably be in a coma myself.  It would be just my luck to wake up in 1597, just as the plague was about to sweep the nation. I’d probably be some poor and destituted weevil picker living in a bog just outside Swindon (if Swindon even existed in those days, which I doubt.  See, not everything about Tudor times was bad) with my eighteen illegitimate children, all of whom would be snotty, smelly and consumptive.  I am not made for glamour.  I must accept my lot, and my snot.

OK you may think I’m going on about this Rowan Williams thing a bit much! Actually the reason for giving this an airing was its appearance in the first episode of Ashes to Ashes the BBC drama which is the follow up to the simply superb Life on Mars. In this series Alex Drake a woman cop is shot in the head (in 2008) by a vagrant who seems to know her. She wakes up on a Thames River boat in 1981 and it’s not long before she meets Gene Hunt and crew whom she has read about in Sam Tyler’s case notes (as well as being a policewoman she’s a psychologist see?). One wonders whether this can live up to Life on Mars and the answer is most probably no. However it was a reasonably promising start and this song came on at an appropriate moment.

Also on tonights programme

This from the Stranglers,

And this one hit wonder from the Passions,