Love is Ashes

Okay, so a little overhyped in the title there, but today is a special day. But what I want to talk about is that spin-off series Ashes to Ashes. (What is it about David Bowie songs that inspire TV series?)

The first episode is called "Deja Vu", and it very much is so. The audience is reintroduced to the idea of a terrible accident sending someone back in time, and have to wait for that person to sort out some rationalisation for staying there and giving us a TV series. The change here is that the person is Keeley Hawes, who I kept seeing as Zoe Reynolds, at least until she changed her hairstyle.

There are plenty of references to Life on Mars, and Alex Drake already knows about Sam Tyler (no reference to Annie Cartwright yet), and we find out what happened to him after the end of the last series as this one is set in 1981. We have some familiar set-ups, in that we know that her parents will be important, as will a time when she's in a red dress and has a balloon. And there will also be clowns (possibly a reference to David Bowie?). If it wasn't that the lead is female, we might wonder if Matthew Graham simply handed in his first script again.

But of course as she is female, there are some immediate thoughts raised: will Alex be sidelined from the action? (She's set up as a psychologist, so clearly are they planning to give her the thinking dialog.) Are they going to continually dismiss her because she's "merely a well-shaped tart"? And, will there be an inevitable romance with Gene Hunt?

Certainly a series I will be watching, but with one eye on checking how much retreading there is.

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