In praise of Ashes to Ashes
Matthew d'Ancona 10:20am
Aside from news programmes, I rarely stay in specifically to watch something on television (as Hugo has written, boxed DVD sets are a very civilised invention). But last night was an exception: as a Life on Mars fanatic, I wanted to see its much-hyped sequel, Ashes to Ashes. No more John Simm as DI Sam Tyler stranded in the Seventies. In this series, we have Keeley Hawes as DI Alex Drake, shot in our own time and sent hurtling back to the (imaginary?) Eighties. All of which, frankly, is a pretext to get back on our screens the one and only DCI Gene Hunt.
The makers of Life on Mars could not have known how awesome Philip Glenister’s performance as Hunt would be, and how iconic the politically incorrect copper would become. But – sensibly – they have made no attempt to disguise the fact that he is the real star of this follow up series, and the reason why we will be tuning in. It looks as if Ashes to Ashes will be more camp, more knowing and even more post-modern than its predecessor. Which is fine, as the Eighties memorabilia lends itself to such treatment: Gene wears JR-style cowboy boots and drives an Audi now. The haircuts are hilarious, the politics evocative and unlovable City types stalk the narrative in Miami Vice pastels, flaunting their phone cards and Sony Walkmans. Plenty of memorable music for those of us who grew in the Thatcher era: Duran Duran, the Stranglers, the Clash, Ultravox’s “Vienna” – plus the clown from Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes video playing a choric role in Alex’s trauma. One of the reasons the conceit works so well is that it repositions our love of trashy retro chic – I ♥ the Eighties – in the upmarket setting of front-rank BBC drama.
But Hunt is the force that holds it all together. Just as Tyler was a right-on policeman of the new school, Drake is a police psychologist, fluent in psychobabble even as she is trying to deal with a hostage situation. And of course, Hunt is no less appalled by what he calls her “psychiatry” than he was by Sam’s squeamishness about his methods and Bernard Manning outbursts. He is as unapologetically appalling as he ever was, quite open that his breed of copper is on its way out (I would say the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 would be his death sentence). But – as in Life on Mars – the whole point of the series is that there is something good and authentic about him: stick with the guv, Alex was told more than once in the first episode, and everything will be okay. Flawed, chauvinistic and loud-mouthed, Hunt represents a heart-of-oak Britishness that – it is implied – we have lost in 2008 and that we subconsciously yearn for. At the end of series two of Life on Mars, Sam chose to commit suicide so that he could return to the gritty, real, spirited Seventies rather than remain in the anti-septic early 21st Century. What will Alex Drake do?
I shall certainly be tuning in to find out. Welcome back, Gene Genie.
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Comments
SJH
February 8th, 2008 11:16amYou happily seem to take up the opportunity to gush at length about any passing manifestation of low "culture"- rubbish television, Hollywood films, Led Zeppelin, Diet Coke.... Is this a result of:(a) the imposition of ersatz "cool" at The Spectator; (b) making up for years of being seen as a spoddy brainbox; (c) turning 40? Admirer as I am of your professional talents, do think you might exercise some of your private passions privately or in, say, New Music Express or Loaded? It's a bit like finding out that a favourite author loves video games...no, don't tell me...
Mr R
February 8th, 2008 11:47amMatthew, I agree that the first episode was excellent. Knowing, playful but also authentic. But don't confuse Gene's "heart of Oak Britishness" with a endorsement that things were better back then. That's bending it a little too far. The writers have been careful to mix nostalga with subtle critism of what people like to call the 'good old days'. Take the TV sets showing Police in Brixton, the uneasy tension between the haves and the have-nots, and how people just had to put up with things (like the Italian resteraunt owner). The arc of the story seems to be trying to hark back to a different time isn't going to get you there, everytime has its problems, Gene's just interested in getting the job done where and he'll use anything at his disposal to do so (Sam's annoying forensics, Drake's 'Psychiatry', or his own brute force).
Idle
February 8th, 2008 12:11pmI'll support you on this, Ronnie. Glenister should have won a BAFTA first time round for his fabulous creation. SJH - there is room for popular culture in the Speccy, surely. Berkmann and Spencer and Delingpole write good columns; Jeremy Clarke, the sub-culture correspondent, might be the best writer in the whole rag. Sadly, the sport column has been dealt a terrible blow by the removal of Keating and his replacement by a some bald fellow whose first column was embarrassing. What WERE you thinking, editor?
Andy B
February 8th, 2008 12:39pmSome of the things featured were not around in 1981 - like the car - and those Thtcherites would have been later, too. But I liked it anyway.
Simon
February 8th, 2008 12:56pmNot so sure myself. I did not watch "Life on Mars' but decided to give this ago on the basis that "Life on Mars" had got such good reviews. While I can see there is an interesting character in DCI Hunt, one wonders about wrapping it all up in a plot which Star Trek would be embarrassed by? May be that is the point -- it is lightweight sci-fi aimed at people who do not normally watch lightweight sci-fi wrapped up in myopic, misogynist nostalgia.
Roba
February 8th, 2008 1:15pmAndy B according to Wikipedia Audi Quatro was in production 1980 - 82
Simon Chapman
February 8th, 2008 2:08pmI loved Alex's repeated & Diana-esque "I'm strong, I'm Strong, I'm STRONG..."
dave, surrey
February 8th, 2008 3:48pmI was at college in the 80's. I seem to remember all the wimmin wearing large shapeless jumpers and frumpy long skirts.. Damn.
David Lindsay
February 8th, 2008 5:05pmAll right, so it's not as good as Life On Mars. And moving Gene Hunt to London already looks like a very bad idea, even if he really would have been addressed as "Guv" rather than "Boss" there, the one really grating thing about Life On Mars. But last night's opener certainly had its moments, even if it was set in a sort of generic Eighties - there were no yuppies as early as 1981. Specifically, when a drug-dealing City type told Gene Hunt that what he was doing (involving heroin, cocaine and prostitution) was just another part of the type of economic system then beginning to be advocated and put into practice, he was spot on. When the party of Disraeli abandoned everything that it had ever stood for domestically (as it had already done in foreign policy by choosing Europe and the US over the Commonwealth) and adopted what becomes of Gladstonian Liberalism when it is stripped of Christianity, then that is what it adopted. And when Labour, having already repeated the Tory betrayal abroad, also enshrined a commitment to such economics in its Constitution, then that is what it enshrined.
Chingford Man
February 8th, 2008 6:37pmOne important reason for the Gene Hunt phenomenon is the growing public disenchantment with the police in modern Britain. You only had to look at the Torygraph's website when Heffer ran his op-ed piece attacking Kent Police to see the change. In an age of PC coppers like Brunstrom, Blair and Paddick, and of the liberal-leftism that permeates all law enforcement agencies, it is no wonder that a fictional character comes to be such a hero.
Sadly the "Conservative" Party, as complacently sleepy as always, (a) does not recognise that this cultural Marxism has made Britain a more crime-ridden place to live, and (b) would do nothing about it even if it did recognise it.
David Lindsay
February 9th, 2008 12:53pmThere should be a series in which Gene Hunt is transported to 2008 and put in charge of investigating political corruption. Which Bowie album could it be named after, and why?
Novus
February 9th, 2008 9:12pmSJH, are those initials a coincidence or are you the great invectivist himself? Either way, reflex snobbery can only be taken so far. Are we to believe you have personally sampled all these things of which you offer so forthright an opinion? Or is it more likely that you have decided that their very popularity must be all the evidence you require of their worthlessness? Try Life on Mars. You might like it. Roba and Andy B: the Quattro was not available in right hand drive in 1981, so its appearance in that form in the series is an anachronism.
John Simm
February 12th, 2008 7:24amWell Done for giving away the spoiler for the end of Life on Mars. Idiot.
Steve Strange
February 13th, 2008 4:57pm"Ashes To Ashes", hell boys and girls it is a TV program.. Great viewing, interesting tunes, wicked lines and FAR better than the dross that "Auntie Beeb" is serving up in the shape of satruday night entertainment. Maybe "gene Hunt" could tellyport himself to 2008 and become the Head of Programming @ the BBC and give us more funny and witty serials like "Life on Mars" & its sequel. WELL DONE to the makers, the 1st episode made great viewing and I can't wait for the rest.
Hays
February 18th, 2008 6:29pmHaving watched 2 eps of AtA, I have to say that I am very disapointed. Think Keeley Hawes is completely unconvincing. Maybe it would have worked better if her character hadn't read Sam's report..? The male characters are excellent as usual, although It seems wrong for Gene to hang out in a cafe/restaurant. It would have made more sense if he had hung out at a local pub again drinking beer and scotch. Also WPC Sharon seems to serve no point to the story. It just seems like she has been added into the script at the last minutes because the directors thought they should have another female actress. I will try a few more eps before I turn off, although judging from the first two, I doubt I will be buying the dvd!
James
February 21st, 2008 7:39pmSimm, as LOM has been out for years now, most of us wouldn't regard it a 'spoiler' anymore (of course, this could be a case of irony i didn't recognise ;D) and Hays, WPC Sharon may have something to do with it in the future, Annie didn't seem to have much to do with it until She became a WDI and Sam's love interest Time will tell, i suppose. Ashes to Ashes is a good programme, although admittidly not as good as life on mars, i have to admit we need coppers like DCI Hunt.
Melissa Ball
February 23rd, 2008 3:02pmI loved Life On Mars but i think that Ashes To Ashes is going to be better than last years.
Philip Davies
February 29th, 2008 11:21amI'm one of those who nearly didn't watch 'AtoA' 'coz it seemed impossible it wasn't doomed to be a rip-off with no reason to exist beyond the desperate need to trade on the surprise popular success of 'LonM' - I thought the essential uniqueness, indeed magic, of Sam Tyler's original predicament was impossible to repeat, and we would be given a pale and unconvincing retread of the gloriously flash Genemobile, with probably the additional prescription of some annoyingly PC woman to safely puncture the Manning-hood of Hunt. But I was wrong!! In fact, the makers have confronted this danger head-on: From the moment Alex steps off the Thames pleasure-boat dressed as a hooker - like the emergence of some louche latter-day Venus - we know that we are to be fascinated by the spectacle of the freely-associating, free-floating, mind at play. The later adoption by Alex and the other cops of disguises, and once more on board a pleasure boat, reveals rather than hides identity, since the whole drama operates as a kind of psychological stake-out, expressing Alex's deep need to catch the elusive reality of things by attempting to escape the haunting oblivion of an all-too-real bullet in her brain. In her 'constructed' psycho-world of coma, Alex, after futile attempts to dress soberly, just surrenders to her avatar's wardrobe, and its lurid desire to grab life's passing show, and this is a really telling device to convey her need for life in the morbid world where she has been lost - like a prostitute going through the motions of the life-force, with the desperate energy of the doomed. The brilliance of emphasizing the post-modern irony of the thing by letting Alex enter a version of Sam Tyler's universe expressly through her intimate knowledge of his case is - though so simple a notion - utterly brilliant: Alex's dissociation from what her rigorous psychiatrist's brain perceives as a sort of parodistic dream-world was first revealed to us in her dizzyingly funny throwaway line when she arrives one day at the Police Station with a general greeting to Gene Hunt and the gang which is nothing but a cheery denial of their very existence: 'Good morning, Constructs!' I was hooked from then on. Whatever the facile nit-pickers might say (and 'even Homer nods') this - along with its predecessor, with which it has an obvious intimate connection - is the best high-concept TV drama since Dennis Potter was writing. Confined within - or rather given free rein through taking place in - the head, as in the case of Potter's Daniel Feeld in 'Cold Lazarus,' this psychodrama is a worthy and long-overdue successor to the tradition of serious - but exciting! - TV drama on British screens. And a word of warning to those misbegotten detractors of the wonderful, beautiful and clever Keeley Hawes: Can't you just be grateful that the 'Rights of Women' can now be issued in such a gorgeous cover? And if you don't think all this beauty and glamour is right for the character - then you just haven't grasped the essential life-force that drives this great series. Compared to Alex, Sam is a prissy - though actually very likeable! - bore. As drama this is, in emotional and intellectual range, already potentially as great as, or even greater than, its remarkable predecessor. Indeed, since it does not appear that Alex is being offered any means of escape by the distinctly avenging Angel/Clown who haunts her, it might be justifiable to say that her predicament is made more tragically inevitable thereby, and that, in comparison to Sam's permitted capacity to hope, right up to the last (albeit delusory as it eventually turns out), Alex seems to know that she's most probably in the ante-room to Death, and it gives to her whole appearance and action in the drama the piquancy of evanescence. IMHO, 'AtoA' is - in an absolute triumph of creative irony - a far deeper emotional and moral experience than 'LonM'. It frankly exists in that metaphysical moment where everything falls into its final perspective, since Alex knows she may be 'A second away from Death, or a second from Life.' Of course, as such a suspension reveals and entails, it no longer matters either way, since after such a breach in existence, there is no going back. The lovely, vivacious, intelligent Alex is a victim, a casualty, a death. We realise this and must grieve even as we delight in her. She passes, and we live a little more intensely, but she passes on, and we must die a little too. This is astonishing and breathtaking writing, directing and acting. Extremely fine work, and congratulations and thanks are owed to all those whose hard work and deep humanity have crafted something so fine - and succeeded in putting it over to a mass audience! And that's what the cultural snobs really hate, of course: That something really big should be out there, prowling untamed and dangerous, like a prostitute infected with Death, or the mind of a police psychologist negotiating with a bullet in her head. How little either she, or we, really know of our own existence, how fleeting it all is, how sad and how beautiful! Here is the mystery of life, masquerading as a witty parody of formula detective thrillers: A concept certainly worthy of the great Dennis Potter himself.