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.

Ashes to Ashes, was no Life on Mars.The simple premise of Life on Mars, if the Radio Times for example and at that time had their facts right, kept the nation guessing.Because the simple premise of Life on mars was that of a modern high tech cop, being thrown back in time to the early 70's, and the nation was asking questions like,- Why was he there ? When is he going back ? How was he going to get back ? Life on Mars was a brilliantly executed original concept, and that's the bottom line.Ashes to Ashes was not an original, it was a follow up, there was none of the mystery, we were not asking the same questions.This in my opinion was what made Life on Mars compulsive viewing.The writers had tried to capture the atmosphere of Life on Mars, but they failed as far as I was concerned.I haven't mentioned the actors in either Series, because I truly believe what I have written in my review, was the hub of what made Life on Mars brilliant, compared to Ashes to Ashes being mediocre.

'Life On Mars' was a popular drama series which ran for two seasons on B.B.C.-1 from 2006-7. Created by Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, it starred John Simm as 'D.I. Sam Tyler', a detective who wakes up in 1973 following a car accident, where he joins forces with the hard-as-nails 'D.C.I. Gene Hunt', and his cohorts 'D.C. Ray Carling' ( Dean Andrews ) and 'D.C. Chris Skelton ' ( Marshall Lancaster ). Liz White provided Tyler's romantic interest as policewoman 'Annie Cartwright'. Hard drinking, no-nonsense Hunt became a kind of symbol for the era. The show's blend of nostalgia, fantasy and fast moving police action secured it a big audience, and it could have continued, but Simm was keen to move on.The only way forward seemed to be to make a spin-off. 'Ashes To Ashes' unfortunately suffered from having to boldly go where 'Mars' had gone first; it begins with 'D.I. Alex Drake' ( Keeley Hawes ) being shot at close range by a maniac, blasting her back to 1981, where Hunt and the boys have relocated to London from Manchester. The show initially drew criticism, many fans were upset by Hawes' performance and the changing of the time period. Britain in the early '80's was a horrible place to be; unemployment had risen to three million, industry was on its knees with factory after factory closing down, race riots took place in Toxteth and Brixton, war with Argentina was around the corner, the general feeling of despair was best summed up by 'The Specials' with their No.1 hit 'Ghost Town'.Whereas 'Mars' looked and felt like it had been shot in the '70's, 'Ashes', on the other hand, initially failed to convince as an '80's show. It seemed that the production team had no clear idea how to evoke the era other than replaying its music or referring to events such as The Falklands War. If 'The Sweeney' was the template for 'Mars', 'Ashes To Ashes' must have been looking in the direction of 'The Gentle Touch', an altogether less violent I.T.V. police drama of the early '80's which starred Jill Gascoigne as 'D.C.I. Maggie Forbes'. 'Ashes' tried to replicate that earlier show's fiery combination of woman detective with a social conscience and uncouth male colleague. Drake came across as a right know-it-all in the early episodes; sneeringly addressing Hunt and co. as 'imaginary constructs' and even laughing at a dog's death, but over time she grew on viewers. Replacing 'Annie' was the charmingly-named Monserrat Lombard as policewoman 'Shaz' Granger, Chris' girlfriend.'Ashes To Ashes' featured superb story lines such as the one where Chris took a bribe in order to be able to buy an engagement ring, and a Falklands War veteran turning into an arsonist ( which ended with Ray giving Margaret Thatcher the one-handed clap when she next appeared on television ). It finally overcame viewer hostility to run to three seasons, concluding in 2010 with a stunning final episode in which it was revealed that Hunt's world was, in fact, a purgatory for dead cops. Drake had been killed, and unlike Tyler in the closing episode of 'Mars', there was to be no going home for her. It ended where 'Mars' had begun, with another detective arriving from the future, and Hunt saying to him: "A word in your shell-like...".If nothing else, both 'Mars' and 'Ashes' prove it is still possible, even in the 21st century, to make good television.

It is probably wrong to compare Ashes to Ashes to the previous Life on Mars, despite the fact that both programmes come from the same creative team and exist in the same thematic universe. Still, Life on Mars was such a benchmark and such a surprisingly rewarding piece of work that such comparisons are really hard to resist. With Life on Mars we had an intelligent piece of television that offered a great story, subtle character interaction and a genuine imagination; blending elements of science-fiction with psychological character analysis, as well as juxtaposing ideas of archaic, twentieth century police procedures with the more high-tech but sterile policing of today. Ashes to Ashes is somewhat similar in the respect that the idea of self-analysis and an attempt to correct the future by way of the past is central to the development of the main character, but somehow it lacks the dynamics or sense of overall purpose that really made Life on Mars such a valid and exciting piece of work.At its most extreme, you could argue that the series here is nothing more than a shameless cash-in; with the producers and writers copying the format of Life on Mars completely and giving us more of Gene Hunt and his particular blend of politically-incorrect, heart-on-sleeve policing against an environment of warm nostalgia. However, even here, the use of the early 1980's as the principal time-frame already shows the character of Hunt to be something of a woeful anachronism; as out of time as the stranded heroine Alex Drake against a backdrop of feminism, class war, immigration, privatisation and a gradual acceptance of homosexuality. Also, the potentially interesting political climate, with the shadow of the Falkland's, tyranny of the Tories, confrontation between races, terrorist attacks and the royal wedding are all reduced to minor details intended to flesh out the creation of a world that is continually undermined by shoddy writing, haphazard direction an attempt to condense the more iconic aspects of 80's culture into a sort of microcosm that feels at odds with a decade supposedly in its infancy. Or is it? The thematic concerns this time around are less about the clashing of cultures and backgrounds in a way that makes for satisfying drama, and more about the creation of a self-aware universe that not only comments on itself but on the notion of the "sequel". As with the audience, Alex Drake understands completely the world that she has entered into and is trying to control it to her advantage. She knows about the characters because she's experienced them through the writings of Sam Tyler in the same way that we the audience experienced them by actually watching Life on Mars. This does rob the programme of some tension, particularly in the first couple of episodes before the characters finally settle into their new roles and the broader aspects of the story become apparent, but it does open the story up to more intriguing ideas and interpretations regarding the role that Alex has in creating the world from her own memories and distorted idea of what the 80's really were.Unlike Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes was less immediate and for me, and this was the programme's greatest flaw. Once it gets going its fantastic; the examination into Alex's parents and the factors that could possibly have led to their demise is rich with drama and emotion and really pays off in the final episode. However, for me, there were far too many lose ends leading up to this, and far too much of the writers having DCI Hunt do outlandish things in an attempt to appease the audience who buy into the whole "iconic" thing and want Gene Hunt catchphrases on their-mobiles. The emphasis on the drama should have remained with Drake consistently, because it is here where the story comes together; with more interplay between her and her parents and less of the Hunt sailing a speedboat under the arches of Tower Bridge and firming machine guns, like he's some colourful cartoon caricature. Or maybe that's the point? Given the fact that the first three episodes were so weak that I almost gave up on this completely - there didn't seem to be any direction in regards to the plot in the same way that Life on Mars so skilfully blended the past, present and visions of Sam Tyler into a jaw-dropping drama - the only way I could interpret Ashes to Ashes was as a post-modern pastiche akin to Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive trilogy. And it makes sense; with the world of Ashes being a complete "construct"; a self-aware artifice create by the character for the character as she lays dying with a bullet in her head, attempting to make sense, not only of the historic chain of events that led to this tragedy, but also the world created by Sam Tyler that was never fully explained. Sure, there are flaws in this theory, but there are also flaws in the show; with far too much pandering to the whims of Hunt-aficionados and less of the tight, tense, labyrinthine blending of self-examination and the self-preservation of a dying brain.It will be interesting to see where the writers take this in the second series. Hopefully we will have more of Alex and more of an insight into the creation of this world in the respect of tying up the loose ends of the second series of Life on Mars. At any rate, if you're looking for more iconic Gene Hunt action then Ashes to Ashes won't disappoint. It's louder, bolder and less subtle than Life on Mars ever was, and here he's pretty much the main character. If you want to involve yourself in the story of Alex Drake and her highly emotional plight then you might have to overcome some serious flaws in the first three or four episodes, but believe me, it's probably worth it.