Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes
TV-14 | 07 February 2008 (USA)
SEASON & EPISODES
  • 3
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  • 1
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  • Reviews
    BlazeLime

    Strong and Moving!

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    Lucybespro

    It is a performances centric movie

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    Maidexpl

    Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

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    Paynbob

    It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

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    studioAT

    When John Simms opted to leave 'Life on Mars' after two series the BBC were left in a pickle. They had a show with ratings on the rise and in Gene Hunt a character who the public seemed to be falling in love with.The answer was simple - lets do the exact same thing, only in the eighties but with a woman cop going back in time instead. Lets go really mad and have Hunt and his crew move down to London too, for no apparent reason.All this leads to a similar, if indeed clever, spin-off that follows the ground already well trodden by the show it was spun-off from. If anything Hunt is more cartoonish than ever, and the show is bigger and bolder because of this.Throw in some good music, and a decent performance from Keeley Hawes, and you've got a show that ran for three series. For me though it lacked the originality of 'Life on Mars' - probably because the premise wasn't original second time around.

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    StevinTasker

    After all that she was dead anyway. All that rubbish in the first series about her parents being killed in a car bomb! It all came to nothing, the story line just dropped. We didn't even find out who shot her or why. All the screen time they wasted showing her angst over being apart from her daughter and she never got back to her. The last episode played out with Gene Hunt as a God type figure acting as custodian for the lost souls of dead coppers. His rival spent a couple of minutes trying to usher the supporting cast down to "the basement" before putting in a ridiculous turn outside the pub snarling like some hell hound. Alex Drake was supposed to be strong willed, resourceful and intelligent and yet she played no part in the three minutes or so they used to end the story. Why couldn't they just have her wake up in the hospital bed? I will watch out for further work from the writing team and avoid it to save myself further misery.Just as disappointing as Life on Mars when Sam Tyler solved the mystery of who kidnapped his girlfriend. He solves it in an early episode, they arrest some guy and Sam realises he will become the kidnapper later on in life, but when Sam returns to the "real world" we don't get any further mention of his girlfriend, the kidnapper or the fact that Sam has put the pieces together. These, along with DI Drake's daughter and the mystery of her parents' death are the reasons we tuned in each week and the writers just left them hanging. What a shame. I've seen the ending to the US version of Life on Mars and at least it had the good grace to provide a proper ending, even though they nicked it from an episode of Red Dwarf.

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    Corky1984

    And so it came to an end and all was revealed. Gene Genie holds the keys to heaven in some kind of police purgatory...or something like that!! Ashes was a brilliant follow-up series to Life on Mars, bringing back Gene Hunt, Chris and Raymondo, but this time down south with those southern nancies, instead of ooop north in Manchester. The gorgeous Alex Drake woke up in 1981 and ended up staying till '83, when the mystery was unraveled. The Quattro was the top star, though, in shiny red and oozing cool. The 80s soundtrack was stunning and evocative. I like everything about this series, from the numerous one-liners, 'get your knickers on love, you're nicked', to the enthralling time-travel/universe jumping confusion! Gene Hunt captured much of what made Regan so special in the Sweeney. Ashes to Ashes was the best thing the BBC has done since Life on Mars. Taken together, the two shows add up to 40 episodes of TV gold. Superb.

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    jhsteel

    I agree with those who say that Ashes to Ashes (or A2A as we fans call it) is different from Life on Mars (LOM), but that has several explanations. Firstly, it is set in the 1980s, and it is written in the spirit of 1980s cop shows, with fashion, glamorous shots and set pieces, etc. Secondly, the central hero is female and her perspective on life is different from Sam Tyler's. She also knows more, having read Sam's notes about his time in Gene Hunt's world in 1973.However, it still has the unexpectedness and the central mystery of its predecessor, so that we are always wanting to know why Alex is stuck in 1981 and how and if she will get back to 2008. And of course, it has the fabulous Gene Hunt who comes into his own in this series. He is still moody and magnificent, and Philip Glenister has created a character with such charisma that I can't stop watching him. All the continuing characters are wonderful, and so are the new ones; Shaz and Viv in particular. Sam Tyler in LOM was intense, driven and edgy, and the darkness and gritty nature of 1970s style cop shows was well represented in LOM. This is equally great, but it's a different animal. I love both shows and I am really looking forward to the next series of A2A. The things that were revealed about Alex's past create new mysteries that need to be solved, so I am hoping that we will find out more. The most original aspect of both LOM and A2A is the central premise that someone can visit another time frame, whether real or imagined, and experience life there, while their body in "real life" is in a coma or near to death. It's a fascinating idea that has a lot of scope, and since it is a fantasy, anything can happen. The identity of Gene Hunt is open to debate - who is he really? I hope that we find out a lot more about this compelling character in the future. British TV at its best. Oh, and I also love 1980s music - really!

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