Ashes to Ashes: Season 3

Having been in a coma for several days (but two years by her internal clock), Alex Drake has awoken back in 2008. However, she finds herself unable to let go of the world she experienced in her coma and visions of her friends eventually draw her back into that world. It is now 1983, Margaret Thatcher is fighting for re-election and Gene Hunt and his department are being investigated by internal investigations over the incident where Alex was shot. The main investigator, Jim Keats, is determined to bring down Gene Hunt after him wriggling off the hook for several past misdemeanours and tries to enlist Alex as his ally. However, other coppers are now starting to have strange visions and Alex finds herself becoming obsessed with one question: what happened to Sam Tyler? And what must she do to return to the real world and her daughter for good?



Ashes to Ashes' third season brings to an end not just the three-year story of this series, but also resolves outstanding questions and mysteries from its parent show, Life on Mars, as well. It's a big task to put on the show's shoulders, giving this season a sense of expectation and resolution only exceeded by the weight of expectation viewers have put onto the final season of Lost (in a quirk of fate, the series finales for the two shows aired within forty-eight hours of one another).

To start with, Ashes falters. Alex is returned to her coma and the world within it very easily, some might say way too easily and conveniently, in the first episode. However, soon we're back with Gene and the gang investigating crimes, which is good, but now with the added menace of Jim Keats looking over their shoulders, sometimes helping, more often egging on Gene to fail so he can bring him down. This element is interesting, with Daniel Mays turning in a great performance as Keats, but it is mishandled. The Keats storyline interferes with and slows down some storylines and feels like a tacked-on fifth wheel in others. Similarly, the Keats storyline also rips apart the dynamic at the heart of the show, with Keats trying to get each of Hunt's team to turn against him, resulting in lots of angry confrontations and a sense of distrust and suspicion hanging over the series. Given how hard-won Alex and Gene's mutual trust and respect was in the first season, resulting in their excellent and devastatingly effective partnership in exposing corruption in the police the second, this feels like dumping the characters back to square one for no real reason. Life on Mars' episode dealing with Ray's horrendous mistake was better, for handling the same story far more concisely without betraying prior character development.

There's also the mythological elements of the series, with characters other than Alex having strange visions of things they cannot explain. Whilst it adds a tremendously creepy element of foreshadowing to the series, it does again interfere with the episode-by-episode storylines. Some of these, such as Gene's bull-in-a-china-shop approach exposing an undercover operation or Gene having to work alongside his old nemesis Lytton from Manchester, are packed with promise, but never develop sufficiently due to time having to be found for the myth-arc and stuff with Keats' storyline.

Farewell to the 'guv and to the Quattro

Luckily, if the series falters over the longer stretch, it does eventually end in style. The penultimate episode welds together the myth-arc element with the episode's own story (about ANC radicals fighting apartheid in London) very efficiently and is much more interesting to watch.

Then there's the finale, which sees actors, writers and the director firing on all cylinders. The great revelations about Gene Hunt's past and Sam Tyler's fate make sense, whilst other revelations, perhaps less expected, are equally convincing. The ending is emotional without being over-wrought, perhaps because there are real elements of tragedy and grimness to the resolution. It's not a neat ending with a nice tied bow to everything, and some revelations are bit of a blow to the gut. But it tracks, makes sense, is thematically satisfying (which is more than can be said for Lost's, but more on that later) and Gene's final words on screen are a great way of sending the series out pretty much where it came in, complete with great accompaniment from David Bowie. The post-credits clip from another famous British cop show is a nice touch as well.

The finale season of Ashes to Ashes (***½ for the season overall, ***** for the finale) is not the knockout, eight episodes of awesomeness that viewers were hoping for, but it is effectively dark and foreboding, setting up an excellent final episode. Gene Hunt and the team, you will be missed. The season will be released on DVD in the UK on 5 July 2010, and will appear in the US (on DVD and BBC America) next year.

Ashes to Ashes: Season 2

It's 1982 and Britain is at war. Whilst the nation cheers on its soldiers and sailors fighting in the Falklands, life back in London carries on as normal for DI Alex Drake. Well, as normal as it can do when you're really from 2008 and your entire life appears to be a fictional construct within your own mind as you suffer from a bullet-induced coma. Having failed to avert her parents' death, Alex is now unsure what it is she must do to return home, until the rising tide of police corruption within the Met becomes clear and she and Gene Hunt make it their mission to bring the bent coppers down. But as their dangerous game of cat and mouse with their corrupt superiors unfolds, Alex starts getting odd messages and hints that she might not be the only temporally-displaced person in this world...


After an initially shaky but eventually compelling first season, Ashes to Ashes returns firing on all cylinders for its second. Learning from their experiences, the writers have put together a much more compelling season-spanning story arc than either the first year of Ashes or both seasons of its predecessor series, Life on Mars, with Gene and Alex leading an attempt to bring down their corrupt bosses in the Met. This storyline takes up the first half of the season, but no sooner is that out of the way than Alex is confronted with the notion that she might not be alone, and has to find out who is sharing her 'hallucination' and why they are there.

The writing is tighter this time around, the characterisation stronger and, in particular, the writing for Alex Drake is much improved, making her a more sympathetic figure than the arrogant know-it-all who dominated the first half of Season 1. There's also a nice subplot for the hitherto under-utilised Marshall Lancaster and Montserrat Lombard as Chris and Shaz, whose engagement provides a nice undercurrent of humour to the proceedings (and unexpectedly ties into the main storyline later in the season). Keeley Hawes and Philip Glenister are still impressive as the leads, with Dean Andrews continuing to provide solid support as Ray Carling, who shows some interesting character growth this season. We also have two recurring characters, Charlie 'SuperMac' Mackintosh (Roger Allam) and Martin Summers (Adrian Dunbar), who act as antagonists through much of the season, both well-played and nicely developed as characters.

The mystery element, namely why did Sam Tyler and now Alex Drake find themselves in the past, is also developed with some intriguing new clues hinting that what the audience previously assumed or thought they knew is completely wrong. Events culminate in the final few moments of Season 2, which rival episodes of Twin Peaks or The Prisoner for sheer surrealism and bemusement-inducing incredulity. What is going on? The third and final season of Ashes to Ashes, which will also mark the final appearance of Gene Hunt and the end of the five-season arc begun at the start of Life on Mars, promises to hold all of the answers.

Ashes to Ashes: Season 2 (****½) is a superior slice of SF-tinged crime drama. It is available now on DVD in the UK, with a US release planned for next year. Season 3 starts airing in the UK in April.

Ashes to Ashes: Season 1

In 2008, DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) is a police psychologist based in London who is planning to write a book about the criminal mind. She is intrigued when she is forwarded a batch of reports from a Manchester copper named Sam Tyler, who fell into a coma after a car accident and experienced what appears to be a vivid hallucination about going back in time to 1973. Drake is fascinated by the world that he apparently created in his own mind. So, when her own encounter with a gun-wielding criminal goes wrong and she is shot, when she wakes up in 1981 and almost immediately meets DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) and his constant sidekicks DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton, she immediately knows what the game is and the rules are.


100% convinced she has created this world in her own mind after slipping into a coma like Sam's, Alex sets about trying to find out what it is she needs to do to wake up. Realising it is only a few weeks before the deaths of her parents in a car bombing incident, she convinces herself if she can save them, she can save herself. But Alex's situation is different, she's not getting any messages from the beyond like Sam was, and her hallucinations (about a clown) seem to be very different. So what is going on this time around?

The notion of Life on Mars having a sequel/spin-off series, especially after its finale seemed to answer the outstanding questions (or at least given the viewer some very strong clues as to what was happening) from that series, always seemed a bit weird. When the premise was announced, the uneasiness settled in. Was it just going to be a cheap rehash of Life on Mars but in the 1980s rather than the 1970s and with a female lead instead of Sam? These fears seem justified by the first two episodes of the first season of Ashes to Ashes. Unlike the perpetually confused Sam, Alex Drake immediately cottons on to the 'game' and rather smugly thinks she knows an explanation for everything that is happening. It has to be said that a smug hero isn't the most likable of characters, and in these opening episodes Alex is very tedious. Also, the writers seem to have forgotten some of the basics of Gene's character, and he is uncharacteristically passive as the series opens and his new DI starts going a bit loopy.

Luckily, things pick up a lot in the third episode after Alex has had the wind knocked out of her sails a few times and the mystery elements of the show kick in. We start to see less of a pastiche of Life on Mars and more of an intelligent evolution of the premise. The characters of Gene, Ray and Chris have moved on somewhat since the 1970s, presumably thanks to Sam's influence, and the 1980s' own issues start to be explored in an intelligent manner, from the shifting attitudes to sexuality to the music of the era and various characters' amazement at cutting-edge technology such as Space Invaders and Betamax. The arc story is also stronger than the two in Life on Mars, with Alex's attempts to avert her parents' deaths lead her to inserting herself into their lives and learning some secrets that perhaps were better left buried. The writers also rediscover Gene Hunt's voice around episode three, and the classic lines and the wince-inducing bull-in-a-china-shop approach to policing are soon front and centre, as they should be. There's also a highly amusing bit of sexual tension between the two characters as well.

The remaining episodes are very strong, the music is excellent, the characters are developed nicely and the denouncement in the final two episodes is compelling. In particular, the rules of the game that Life on Mars laid down and Alex has been following seem to be shattered by the events in the final episode. What really is going on? With two seasons to go after this one it'll be a while before we find out, but after a very shaky start, Ashes to Ashes hints that the answer could be stranger but more interesting than we first thought.

Ashes to Ashes, Season 1 (***½) takes a while to get going, but once it does it becomes a worthy continuation and successor to its parent series. It is available now on DVD in the UK. A US release is planned for 2010. Season 2 will be released on DVD in the UK in a couple of weeks.