Wednesday 16 April 2008

Ashes To Ashes, funk to funky...

Wednesday 16 April 2008

I had my problems with Ashes To Ashes -- primarily the way the make-believe aspect eliminated a sense of actual danger; as we know it's not time-travel, it's a "safe" fantasy. But it was still entertaining. I (mostly) found Keeley Hawes to be a charismatic lead as Alex, Philip Glenister had some good scenes as Gene, and the production was slicker and more accomplished than Life On Mars'. Oh, and the finale was actually good fun.

Information about season 2 has just surfaced, from the lips of creators Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, no less -- who are promising a "bigger mystery" to underpin the show:

Graham: "Then we started talking about what we call our three-year plan, which is if, all things being equal, we can run Ashes To Ashes – if we have a series two – if we can run it beyond series two to series three, as is our hope, we can actually unveil a bigger mystery, a bigger plan. And ultimately reveal a lot more about the characters.

"The first series of Ashes To Ashes was more about laying the ground rules again, and just kind of having fun and getting people into the '81 groove. And then we’ll start playing out the bigger mysteries... now we can start darkening it, now we can start doing some of the things we did in Mars. We’re bringing in bigger mysteries and more textured stuff, I think. We weren’t sure about doing it in this initially."

Pharoah: One of the things we talk about in series two of Ashes is how much more muscular the early Eighties cops would be – obviously I can’t give too much away. But you can tell we’re excited by series two."

That all sounds promising, but I'm still not convinced there's mileage in a concept that fulfilled itself in Life On Mars' finale. Still, I'm definitely intrigued to see if and how the writers can keep Alex's internal-'81 misadventure interesting. How deep can the rabbit burrow go?