One of the stand out shows on the BBC of the last few years was Life on Mars (BBC|Wikipedia), which saw DCI Sam Tyler played by John Simm waking up in the year 1973 after being hit by a car in 2006.
Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?
The first episode of Ashes to Ashes (BBC|Wikipedia) the sequel series was screened last night and though I thought it was good fun and I enjoyed it a great deal at the moment I feel it isn’t quite in the same league as Life on Mars.
I liked the mystery and ambiguity over Sam’s predicament in Life on Mars but the final episode of that is like the first page of Ashes to ashes and it’s pretty clear that Alex is gravely injured from the gunshot and is probably experiencing the alternate universe of Gene Hunt (based on the report of Sam Tyler’s that she’d just read) as she dies.
With the Geneverse being clearly not based in reality from the outset in this show they’ve decided to go all out and create a bit of a pastiche of Miami Vice albeit set in London. Hopefully the Miami Vice idea of flash cars, speedboats and automatic weapons doesn’t survive beyond this first episode as fun as it was it was frankly a bit rubbish.
