We're back to last Thursday's Bonekickers event now. Writers Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham have done quite a job in a) coming up with Life On Mars, b) coming up with Ashes To Ashes, and now c) coming up with Bonekickers. Life On Mars, obviously, is very close to our hearts and rightly goes down as a TV classic, while Ashes To Ashes, well, hmmm. It was good wasn't it, but nowhere near as good as its predecessor. It's still a conversation starter though, and people still want to know all about it, as the Bonekickers event proved. After the screening, there was a Q&A with Mr Pharaoh, and, inevitably, the subject of Ashes To Ashes series two popped up, have a look after the jump to see what he said, it's quite interesting.
For the record I thought Ashes To Ashes was pretty good. In places it was brilliant, but compared to Life On Mars it was merely good. Compared to most other dramas on TV elsewhere, it was terrific. I didn't have a problem with Keeley Hawes either. I thought it relied too much on the music, looked too much like a music video and Gene Hunt hadn't developed as nicely as he could have done.
Anyway, people are still gagging for ATA news, so this is what Pharaoh said about series two:
"We've just handed in episode one. It's set in 1982, so the Falklands have just happened. We're taking it slightly darker this time, now the characters have been established. The first episode is about a murder in a strip club in Soho, and there's a lot of the 80s left and it's a good excuse to get the music off iTunes. I'd like to do another series after this one too; Matthew and I have a big story we want to tell when the whole thing ends."
That's a pretty thin revelation. How about a bigger, if speculative, spoiler?
'Ashes to Ashes' series 1 telegraphed a theme that 2 has to pick up. Gene Hunt dropped overt hints early on about being a guardian angel, plus various throwaway lines of which the most memorable was "Lord, I am being tested. I fear I may fail" when he and Drake were trapped and disrobing in a closet. He proved it in the finale when he carried Drake jnr away from the scene of her parents' death. "You weren't there", says Drake snr's memory. "I was needed, I was there", says Gene. Finally he tells Drake jnr she can come back and see him when she is in trouble - which takes us back to the opening episode.
The theme thickens with Shaz's thanks to Drake on her return from the stabbing: "My guardian angel!"
I think we'll find that becoming a guardian angel is what happens to some (all?) (suddenly?) dead people, or maybe coppers - protecting other coppers. Drake doesn't know it yet, but she is protecting Shaz. She'll find out in series 2 or 3. Sam Tyler didn't know it in 'Life on Mars' either, but he was Annie Cartwright's guardian angel - in both finales. Hopefully we will see him and her again at the denouement.
I am really looking forward to the next seires of A2A, I actually think that Ashes to Ashes is better than its predesesor, life on Mars, which I couldn't get in to (Probably on account that I only saw the last few episodes and half the first one) I also like the links that Alex Drake has to the past and the story of tring to save her parents and get back to her daughter. I think both seires were really good, however, and we deffinatly need more tv like them