Overdubbed on atmospheric skyline shots of London landmarks, a child’s voice reads Sam Tyler’s original ‘Life on Mars’ intro. The child is Molly, only daughter of DI Alex Drake, and she’s being driven to school on her birthday by her Mum. Tyler died, eventually, in April last year. He deserves a book all to himself and Drake may well be the one to write it. Her thoughts of authorship evaporate when the radio crackles into life with a shout. A gunman has taken a female hostage. Molly relishes the chance to deploy the siren.

The gunman – Arthur Layton – has asked for Drake by name, threatening to shoot his busker hostage unless Drake talks to him. He knows her, but she doesn’t recognise him. You’ve got your mother’s eyes, he tells her, and begins to sing softly under his breath. I’m happy, hope you’re happy too. Molly, scared for her Mum, runs through the barrier and Layton grabs her, drags her away down the steps to the waterside where a shot rings out. Somehow, Molly is safe. She managed to get away. Alex hands her over to her godfather Evan and all returns to safe normality. Except Layton is hiding in Alex’s car. He takes her back to the docks and makes a phone call. She’ll be his ticket out of here, he says, Tim and Caroline Price’s daughter. But whoever he’s calling isn’t impressed, even when he threatens to tell Alex the truth about how her parents died. “I had an empire here,” he whines, “back in the day. Connections.” Alex tries desperately to negotiate with him. She’s a negotiater. It’s what she does. But it doesn’t work on Layton. He puts on his shades and shoots her in the head.

My introduction describes the first nine minutes of the action, but it only took the merest fraction of that nine minutes for me to realise that I’d come home. After all the hype, all the anticipation, the rumours, the snippets of press release that had dripped like slow summer honey from an overfull beehive, this was it. Here it was. And it was glorious. It was perfect. Or, if it wasn’t perfect, then I was incapable of describing or even of imagining how it could have been any better. Then it got better.

Alex wakes up to the sound of Ultravox’s Vienna. She’s aboard a boat party on the Thames, dressed as a prostitute in the company of prostitutes and their clients. A police raid is in progress. Confused by the large quantities of Adam Ant posters lining the dock, she emerges from a tunnel and catches sight of herself reflected in a puddle just as a well-dressed “gentleman” from the boat party catches up with her. He’s not happy. He thinks Alex is responsible for breaking the party up and is about to lay into her when a red Audi Quattro screeches around the bend and skids to a halt in a cloud of dust in front of them. Out steps…Gene Hunt. “Today my friend,” he intones laconically, “your diary entry will read: Took a prozzie hostage and was shot by three armed bastards.”

Alex doesn’t recognise him at first. She’s read about them in Tyler’s notes but she doesn’t know what they look like. She tries to rationalise her surroundings and the events of the last few minutes, spouting a load of psychobabble. “Is it me,” asks Ray, “or are toms getting smarter?”

Then the newly-arrested man calls Gene by name and Gene, in turn, addresses his men. She recognises their names – Chris Skelton, Ray Carling and, yes, Gene Hunt. She faints.

Readers who didn’t watch Life on Mars will have to forgive me. Obviously I’m reviewing this from the point of view of someone who not only watched Life on Mars but was an ardent fan. Indeed, I’d be really interested to hear how this played out for anyone not familiar with the back story. For me though, it was so perfectly handled I’m smiling fit to crack my face at the memory of it. Keeley Hawes captured the semi-confusion of Alex exactly right. She believes it’s all an illusion. A fantasy of her comatose – possibly bullet-damaged – brain. But she recognises it. It’s familiar, but only from the notes. Yet now, it’s real. And the figments of Sam’s imagination are figments of hers too.

They arrive at Met HQ and Alex steps out of the car.

“I can hear the wind in the trees,” she marvels.
“Strewth,” observes Hunt. “She’s gonna break into song.”
“It’s a full sensory hallucination.”

All the criticism I’ve ever levelled at a TV programme, all the moaning I’ve ever done about plot holes and weak dialogue. About scenery imperfections, wooden acting and sloppy direction. What a total joy it was to be able to jettison the lot, for NONE of it applied here. And towering above all the excellence in every aspect of this show was the writing. Care and loving attention to detail shone from every syllable. Tight, witty and totally in character every time. So many gems of humour that it’s hard to count them.

Later, inside the station, Alex makes a discovery: “It’s July 1981. It’s the year my Mum & Dad died.”
“What of?” asks Hunt. “Confusion?”

Although believing she knows how the “fantasy” works, Drake is frustrated by the lack of communication. She believes her mind will “fashion conduits to the real world” much as Sam Tyler experienced, but it’s not happening. The phone call is just a phone call, and the radio is just a radio.

She spots her name plaque on the desk. Unfortunately, to pick it up she has to kneel suggestively in front Gene, much to the delight of the boys. The smile is wiped off their faces when she reveals her warrant card.

They retire to the office to discuss the case, but not before Gene has given an inimitable word of advice to the rest of the department: “I don’t want anyone filling in their arrest diaries, got it? I’ll fill it in for you just as soon as I’ve decided what you were doing.”

The toff from the boat is revealed as Edward Markham, who heads up a drug dealership in the city. They’re about to interview him with an eye to clearing up the entire drug problem on Gene’s patch. Alex though is still distracted by the idea of making contact with the “real world.” She asks Chris where they keep “the most advanced radio in this station.” He takes her to an equipment room and pauses dramatically.

“Wait for it,” he enthuses, opening the door with a flourish.
“Oh, God,” moans Alex
Mistaking her groan for awe, Chris adds: “It’s like Tomorrow’s World in’t it boss?”

Like I said, the whole hour was filled with gems like this. Many of them I didn’t pick up on the first time round. Ashes to Ashes is one series that will pay back your investment in its (eventual) DVD many times over as you catch pearls that flashed by too quickly on first sight.

Gene thinks Markham is the kingpin of the drugs syndicate, but Alex knows he doesn’t fit the psych profile of a leader. Armed with her anachronistic knowledge of Layton (the fact that he told her he had an empire “back in the day”), she knows it’s him, not Markham, who is in charge. But back in 1981 Layton has the perfect cover. In Gene’s words, he’s “a tinker with a minor record.”

Alex stands in front of a whiteboard, trying to make sense of her situation with the help of Chris and Shaz. Her first point of reference is that she was shot which resulted in her arrival in this Dystopia. She writes Dystopia on the board. She believes her mind won’t waste energy in the fantasy inventing things she doesn’t need, so: Everything here is significant. To be able to understand what’s going on, she must constantly Analyse, and since Layton knew her in the future, she must always have been destined to come here. She adds Destiny to the board and is shocked to realise that the initial letters of what she’s written spell DEAD.

Despite what Gene thinks, Alex is certain Layton is the trigger she needs to wake up from 1981 and get back to 2008. They pay him a visit in his junk shop and end up arresting him. In a chilling echo from the future, Layton whines: “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t like it.” They have to release him eventually though. Hunt admits: “As much as it pains me, I think we may need something that will stick in court.”

In conversation with Ray, Alex learns that Sam Tyler came back to 1973, but died in a jewellery bust only the year before she arrived in the past. He drove his car into the river and his body was never found, but he’d been living with Annie, Hunt and the boys for seven years. Alex realises that Sam died in 1980 at exactly the same moment he died in 2007, and Ray’s story confirms his observation that time moves differently for someone “in the past.” Back in 2008, it may only be a second since she’s been shot.

Lunch at Luigi’s provides an excuse for some more excellent music from the 80s (the soundtrack for A2A is shaping up to be every bit as good as LOM), some vibrant visuals, and yet another classic piece of dialogue:

“I invented this world,” mumbles Alex, getting slightly drunk.
“I invented something once,” rejoins Gene. “The bruise-free groin slap.”

Classic.

Drake crashes on the couch to sleep off lunch and half-wakes to find Molly sharing it. “Go sleep in your own bed,” she says grouchily, shoving her away with a hip, before waking up fully with a start to find Molly is gone.

The team try to set Markham and Layton up in a sting operation using Chris and Shaz, but Markham is wise to it. He catches Shaz in the Toledo while Chris is off taking a leak and kidnaps her as “corporate insurance” after beating Chris up. Unable to raise any of the team on the radios, Chris legs it back to the station and mobilises the whole department.

Standing on the banks of the cut, Gene calls the shots:
“Uniform you’re the C Team; DI Drake you lead the B Team; I’m the A Team.”
“God have mercy,” groans Alex at the awful cultural reference.

Across the water, Chris sees Shaz being dragged out of a car, and panics. He heads for the quayside, shouts a warning and opens fire. The thugs have machine guns. Layton tries to escape with Shaz but Gene shoots up the Merc, blowing the radiator. But even with this small victory, Gene is in trouble. He radios Alex: “A Team are cut off. Even I can’t walk on water.”

She gives chase and once again, as was foreshadowed at the start of the story, faces Layton when he’s holding a gun to someone’s head. This time it’s Shaz rather than Molly. Just as things seem desperate the radio crackles back into life: “The A team are back in business.” And indeed they are – in a speedboat with their own machine guns.

Like some local version of James Bond, Hunt lands, gunfire is exchanged, the baddy is banged up and no-one gets hurt. “He’s under arrest! He’s under arrest!” screams Alex to the air, expecting that to be all it needs to release her back to 2008. But it’s not. “Your presence is required around here for just a little bit longer. By me,” admits Gene, clearly impressed with her even though he insists on calling her Bollyknickers.

Back in Alex’s apartment, BBC1 is closing down. As the familiar notes of the National Anthem swell out, she wonders why the television holds no message for her, like it did for Sam. She plays with the radio, which also maintains a frosty silence. “It worked for him,” she muses. “Why won’t it work for me?” And then it does. Barking out “Go to sleep!” and surprising her into dropping it. Molly appears on TV as the clown which has dogged Alex throughout the episode. You’ve just been shot. A second ago. You’re lying on the wet ground. Don’t try to wake up. It’ll hurt too much.

The sight of Molly hardens Alex’s resolve. She records a heartfelt message of defiance and commitment to return, and heads for Luigi’s where the team are enjoying some R&R to the strains of “Nothing Lasts Forever.” She sips the wine Gene pours for her and looks pensive as the credits – artfully done in 1980s “green screen” characters – roll.

How can the team behind A2A have achieved something that simultaneously manages to be the same as LOM but different? I mean it has the same vibe, the same texture, the same wit. But it has a whole different dynamic with Alex replacing Sam, and with the music and culture of the 80s replacing the 70s. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. Apparently there are some saddos somewhere in their crusty, irrelevant garrets tapping out negative criticism of this show. Ignore them. They are as important to our understanding and enjoyment of this show as the scum Gene Hunt grinds under his politically incorrect environmentally unfriendly crocodile skin boot heels. The long wait is over. Ashes to Ashes is here and boy was it worth the wait.