Metaphysics and Gene Hunt

Thanks to the Life On Mars wiki for this convenient
and wonderful image.

Listen, I know this article is total bullshit. But it's here. Hopefully the last in my three-part series on Metaphysics. Written 5/10/12.

The worlds present in the GHTTB are fairly consistent for the vast majority of its run. The Coma World (I refuse to ascribe to the silly Limbo theory and explain away that solution as Alex's fevered dreams in the few moments of semi-consciousness before death) runs parallel to reality and is affected by what is happening to said Coma World's host. In Life On Mars, Sam is the world's Host. His memories of 1973 create a brown world with cowboy cops like Gene Hunt, one in which he faces his parental issues and in which he learns how to feel happy with his life. For him, while the world around him is definitely produced by his own head, that does not dismiss its validity as a reality.
     More than Alex, Sam's world is very much affected by the status of his body in Reality. He is much more prone to hallucinations, blackouts and delusions due to too many meds, the return of old colleagues, the death of a mentor - there's an explicit chain between the realities that creates many a plot point and, indeed, most of the tension in the series. Unlike the cheeky reference to the Creator connection in Back To Earth, the Bonanza has a much more personal and powerful singular Creator - one that is unwilling. This makes its status in the quantum multiverse more troublesome, because that would imply a causal link between the Sam of the Bonanza's reality and of the Universe elsewhere, as opposed to a single entity.
      Alex's world reflected her memories of the Eighties, which for her were tainted by not only her mother's affair but the death of her parents and her eventual adoption. While Sam's attempts to change his Coma World were in order to return home, Alex's were always a lot more personally motivated - she didn't just remember Tim and Caroline Price as her parents, but she had also grown to respect them as people while in the Coma World. While Alex has fewer (but more vivid, usually) hallucinations than Sam, she has a much stronger bond with the Coma World than she does with Reality, which helps to explain why she is unable to escape.

Sam gets more crazy shit, but that's because
he's more in tune with Reality.

     Ashes To Ashes went all weird on us during the gap between the final two seasons, presenting a third reality that was supposed to represent Alex's death in the operating theatre. Time dilation between Universes is a common theme in the Bonanza, and thus explains why the moment of death was seen as a completely different reality from the moments of believed post-death. Strangely, Alex's stronger connection to her personal Coma World can be seen here as well - even in this reality within a reality, Gene and the crew of CID bleed through and her "awakening" is not to the real world, but to the 1980s. While it may just seem to be weird for the sake of being weird, it instead presents the largest part of the metaphysical theory surrounding the Bonanza as a whole.
      In the Life on Mars and Ashes To Ashes universe, the greater poignancy with which you remember one's past, the stronger bonds you form within the world created by your mind. Sam was sent back to 1973 because that was the year his father ran away, an event that, while it had troubled him, isn't seen to have had a large effect on Sam in the present. Alex, on the other hand, was eyewitness to her parent's murder-suicide, and the following years of foster parenting by the man who arguably led to said event (by having an affair with her mother) made sure that it became imprinted on her mind. When Alex heard Sam's description of the Coma World, she instantly became obsessed with the idea of causality within such a vivid world and that is the reason why she is so much more in tune. For Sam, it remains 1973 throughout his entire stay in the Coma World. His experiences and memories are stagnant, unchanging. Alex's time moves rather swiftly, comparably.
      One constant remains in both worlds that lends credence to the idea that the Coma World is in fact part of the Quantum Multiverse, and exists as a Parasite Universe that can only be controlled by the counterparts of those in Reality. Gene, Ray, Chris, Annie, Shaz, Martin Summers - these people all once existed in Reality, outside of the Host's memories. What does that mean, then? Who is the Host when these guys aren't around? If we are to preserve the Coma World without straying off into Limbo territory, then we have to concede that the quantum doubles created by this parasite Universe can live on after their counterparts in Reality have already died. And that, perhaps, is why both Sam and Alex end up dead, even though the former was able to escape. To create a double in another Universe, you must incapacitate, remove or kill the original in Reality. The reason why there was a connection between the two Universes was that this doubling up created an unstable point - a weak spot, allowing one reality to spill over into the other.

This theory doesn't cover Keats. But I try to ignore him,
despite how wonderfully he's played by Daniel Mays.

      This, then, becomes consistant with our exploration of Red Dwarf. If a Universe created via Hallucination is maintained by said person, then there will be inconsistancies where reality and the imagination of the host collide in a sort of cosmic reaction. In BTE, it was Lister's acceptance of the reality's true nature that allowed Kochanski to form within it, and it's because both Sam and Alex realise what's going on that their worlds are so relatively affected by the outside. The Gene Hunt Time Travel Bonanza, for all of its bullshit regarding demons and limbo, can be turned into an interesting collection of sci-fi concepts that neatly explain exactly what's going on without even touching the supernatural. It may not be actual proven science, but it's still fun and I'm glad that this series of articles has allowed me to examine this.

Thanks.

  << Red Dwarf - Back To Earth ----------Metaphysics---------- ||                                                      

Halloween and Ashes To Ashes 3.8

The nights are dark and mired in storms; leaves turn brown and die, falling to their doom. Autumn has been upon us for two glorious months, and now it's that time of the year when we set aside our differences and celebrate the scary, the horrifying and the tacky. It's Halloween, and as a treat this year I'll be looking at the final episode of the Gene Hunt Time Travel Bonanza, the first piece of TV I ever talked about on this blog (here). Contains spoilers for Ashes To Ashes, Life On Mars and, funnily enough, the ending of LOST.

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Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Eight (Revisited)
Written 15/8/12
 

Keats forces the team to face reality. Or limbo, as it were.

It's a tad strange to be back here after two years. At the time, the finale of Ashes To Ashes seemed like a betrayal of everything I'd hoped and expected from the series; really, I didn't see a problem. As far as I was concerned, Alex was in a coma; that was that. All the anomalies, all the strangeness - that could be explained incredibly simply using that comaworld concept, and I felt that the rather more religiously motivated retcon was ridiculous and unnecessary. Now of course it still could be a coma, but I'll admit that the finale's concepts do stretch all the way back to the second series of Life On Mars, which gives them some credence.
     A case pops up surrounding some dead Dutch gangsters, but Gene is pissed off by Alex walking out on him in the previous episode. They have an argument, and Alex decides to follow the picture to Lancashire, and Gene follows. With their leaders gone, Keats gives Ray, Shaz and Chris individual videos, which they initially disregard to get on with the case. In Lancashire, Alex finds the shallow grave mentioned in her hospital room, and finds a body there - although not, as she'd expected, that of Sam Tyler. Instead, it's the body of young PC Gene Hunt, who in reality died in 1953 and has occupied this world ever since. Gene claims that the world around them is a form of copper's limbo, and Keats arrives to confirm that he is a Demon.
     Back at CID, and in turn the three officers watch the videos: Ray killed himself in the 70s after accidentally killing a fellow officer; Chris was shot in the 60s when a raid went wrong; and Shaz was stabbed with a screwdriver in the 90s by a car-thief. They go with Keats to his "new department" downstairs, with Gene trying to persuade them to come with him and do their blag operation on the Dutch gangsters. While Keats freaks out, the three eventually decide that Gene is their friend and they do the blag, culminating in a scene in which Ray, Chris, Shaz and then, sadly, Alex go into their heaven, the Railway Arms from Life On Mars.

Gene stays in Limbo to guide dead coppers into Heaven.

     I'm fine with quasi-religious themes in fiction; I don't like them, but there's nothing wrong with them in theory. However, I am averse to them being thrown into series that have never had those themes before just to make a dramatic point. It came just before the broadcast of the final episode of LOST, which did exactly the same thing. LOST, admittedly, was a lot more devastating because it betrayed everything that I'd ever liked the series for; it's admirable attempts to provide sci-fi explanations for supernatural phenomena were spat at by having a magical plug and a man-made afterlife. The Bonanza was even worse than that: there never had been any supernatural phenomena, everything that went haywire with reality was as a direct response to their comaworlds being stimulated from the outside. Introducing a copper's limbo that can be dipped in and out of by anyone in a coma may tidy up a few ends, but it simply opens up others. Under the coma-only theory, officer Frank Morgan was simply Sam's experience of his neuro-surgeon. In this explanation, if you're a copper then you've got to have been a copper and then either died or gone into a coma, which just doesn't make sense.
     At the same time, the finale highlihgts a lot of the problems inherant within Series Three. Mainly, it took our characters and simplified their characterisations by ridiculous amounts. Series Two felt like a more standard, higher-quality crime drama that just happened to have a present-day protagonist, while this story tries to pretend that Ashes To Ashes has been playing out like some kind of fairytale. The image of Gene Hunt and his escapades isn't the reality of the series, but rather the edited highlights of the series' embryonic moments that completely sheds any of the times in which the Bonanza had depth and power. I think that this, perhaps, is the greater betrayal; the betrayal of its own potential, of its own past. 
     I did like it much more than I did on first viewing, however, as this time I knew what was coming and could see the buildup and the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. Like that LOST finale, the episode hit the right emotional strings in all the right places, and exposed Gene's character to its very core before building him back up in a more confident way. While it was sad and quite disconcerting how quickly Alex got over never seeing her daughter ever again, it was a good end for the character and brought closure to this two-year marathon with great grace.

Thanks. Goodbye GHTTB. Happy Halloween.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.7

Tobias tries to protect his cause.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Seven
Written 14/8/12

Last week saw Ashes To Ashes rise out of a four-week slump in standards to meet up with my expectations, and this week, while slightly more conflicted in its aims, still continues that quality. Tackling both Chris Skelton's characterisation surge and the 80s issue of Apartheid South Africa,the episode managed to keep a healthy air of darkness and paranoia about the place, which made is a damn-side more fun than it should have been.
      After Viv's death, emotions are running high at CID. Gene is angry and upset, keen to get rid of Keats through a decent collar, while Chris has finally grown some balls and has decided that he needs to stand up for himself. Both get a chance to prove themselves when there's an incident at a secret hideout of the ANC, the freedom fighter organisation fighting against Apartheid in South Africa. A body is found, but no-one wants to own up until group-leader Tobias hands himself in to protect the other members of the group. It's revealed that the murdered man was a Special Division spy, and that he was killed by the woman who believed herself to be his lover. A bomb goes off at the South African embassy, and the White government are keen to have Tobias deported, but Chris knows that he is innocent and stands up to Gene by letting him go. After Chris finally gains Hunt's respect, he gets his Life On Mars Music Moment and joins with Shaz and Ray in seeing a wall filled with stars.
     Meanwhile, Alex has been given her remit by Keats; Gene is the enemy, and she needs to go and get him., transforming into the equivalent of Life On Mars' Frank Morgan. She goes out for an intimate dinner with Gene, where he admits that Sam Tyler didn't die in the accident; rather, he told Gene to fake his death when he had discovered something that changed his view of the world. Keats questions her confidence in him; where did Annie go, and why did Sam just vanish completely from the world? She goes back to Gene's place, where they slowdance, but Keats knocks on at the last minute and gives Alex an address: there's a grave on a hill in Lancashire, and he wants Alex to see.

Chris gets some characterisation, but it's too late.

     Despite all of the movements in plot, the episode left we with very, very little feeling. It was wonderfully atmospheric, and I'm glad Chris finally got some character development, but its too little too late and the crime plot was really quite weak in so many ways.  There have been four damn episodes in this series that could have been filled with these main-plot developments, but instead we've been given useless "hints" that serve to do nothing but frustrate, while the main plots still suffer because they lack the episodes' focuses! 3.7 certainly did a lot and I did enjoy it, but it's bittersweet because it shows how much of the series has been wasted.

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.6

Paul Thordy claims to be one Sam Tyler.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Six
Written 9/8/12 

Woah, someone decided to get serious all of a sudden. After five weeks of bandying about with prophecies and cryptic hints with very weak main plots, the finale spirit finally kicked in with a dark and brooding story that struck at the heart of our characters and took time to fuck with the audience's perceptions. It also saw one of our main cast actually die, which is pretty breathtaking when you consider how safe the series has been in that regard up until now. Spoilers follow. (As if you care.)
       There's been a prison riot, and with desk sergeant Viv having gone inside to sort things out, the place has been overrun, with the brutal ringleader Sachs holding him as a hostage. Keats is breathing down Fenchurch's necks as they try to get their officer out of the fray, with Gene going in desperation to criminal Paul Thordy. Using brutality we haven't seen since Series One, Gene tries to get info on Sachs' plan, Thordy having shared a cell with him in prison. When Alex talks to Thordy, the man claims to be Sam Tyler, speaking in a very northern accent and knowing things about both the future and about Gene that makes her uncomfortable. He claims to have seen the truth behind Alex's world, and it's a truth that Gene clearly doesn't want her to know about. Just as Alex manages to discover the truth from Thordy about Sachs' plan, Gene has sent Ray and Chris in disguised as members of the press. As soon as Alex reveals to CID that Viv was originally working with Sachs to release his nephew, Sachs works out Ray and Chris' identities, and ties the three officers up to a fence. Keats sends in members of the Riot Squad, but Alex and Gene know that the place is tripwired to electrify the fences the moment they walk in. They turn off the power and save the two senior officers, but Viv has been shot and he dies when Keats ushers him to sleep, this time taking a much more creepy overtone.
     The drama here seemed real for the first time this season, with the steaks very much on the line. It was a very pessimistic series of events, almost every action taking CID further from success until the end. This was confounded slightly by the Thordy subplot, which felt both pandering and very psychologically weird at the same time. Thordy doesn't really fit into the final series model painted by the finale, and at the end of the day his knowledge of the inner workings of Sam Tyler remain unexplained. It was a nice way to add some character tension, but at the same time it felt very sensationalist and felt more like an excuse to use the characterisation of the former protagonist.

Viv's death was gruesome and unsettling.

     Keats is still creepy, Gene is still angry and misleadingly evil, Alex is still clueless and Chris has no character development. But at least the tone was flowing in the right direction this week, as we ready ourselves for the finale. The penultimate episode of the Bonanza won't really focus on the main themes of the series as much as this episode does, but it will see us in towards one of the most divisive grand finales in the last few years of British Television.

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.5

Lytton from Life On Mars returns.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Five
Written 5/8/12

The problem with reviewing Series Five of the Bonanza is simply that this series has very little originality left. It follows the same few dischordant plot ideas while treading out very straightforward, uninteresting mysteries for the main plots. Even this week's call back to the Bonanza's third episode wasn't enough to make it truley worthy of my time, and it made me seriously consider skipping straight to the finale and summarising the next few episodes. The episode did feature some nice stuff for Ray and Shaz, but other characters remained neglected.
     When chasing down a suspect, the gang's collar is caught by the division of DCI Lytton (Eastenders' Lee Ross), Special Division in Manchester from Life On Mars 1.3. While Ray is happy to see his old colleagues once again, the rest of the gang is uneasy as Lytton makes claim to retired comedian Frankie Hardwick, whom he claims has stolen from the Police Widows' Fund. Gene and Alex smell a rat, and soon it becomes clear as they investigate both Lytton and Hardwick that the truth lies with Lytton's DI, Bevan (Nicolas Gleaves, Survivors), who it turns out was trying to kill Hardwick after he had seen Bevan kill a black child. While Alex probes Bevan on his history with Gene and with Sam Tyler, Gene finishes by killing Bevan and burning the evidence that Alex has from the case. Lytton goes back to Manchester, amiable with the rest of the team but forced into court by Keats.
     The most standout scene was by far the talent show segment used to lure Bevan into a vulnerable position. Ray, confused over seeing the Starfield, sought comfort from Shaz's empathy as they sung a strained rendition of Oh Danny Boy. It felt like the first strands of the plot were coming together, but it was a tad annoying that once again, Chris was relegated to being the corny comic relief. It's a shame that the background character who had the most promise in Life On Mars has become the one with the least follow up at this stage in the game.

Gene tries to find Hardwick before Bevan does.

     Other than that, very little to say. There was barely enough here to sustain the runtime, and it's sad to see that the return of a character who was in the first series for a single episode is thought to be good enough to sustain a plot; one whose theme touches upon the normal police corruption that we basically wrote a dissertation on last series. With only a few episodes left to go, it's a bit sad that the standards have fallen to this level of sheer boredom.

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.4

Gene breaks into the Blue Peter Garden.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Four 
Written 28/6/12

Halfway through the final series, and I'm finding it ever more disconnected than before. There's some concentrated effort to focus on the characters, but that doesn't correlate with the overall tone; it's almost as if a character gains traits in one episode and then defaults to character stereotype in the next. That's the big problem with any mix of crime drama with another genre, in that the case-a-week format doesn't allow much character development. This week's episode certainly wasn't at all bad, but it was treading on themes and cliches that the series has driven into the ground, and its plot twists are signposted from a mile away.
     Following a drugs tipoff, the gang accidentally step on the territory of a neighbouring division. Their officer, DI Louise Gardiner, is undercover in the rising criminal organisation of disgraced criminal Terry Stafford and his son Daniel, with whom Gene has a vengeance. When Gardiner appears to have been attacked, they investigate in full force, but soon discover that the head of Gardiner's department has been bribed by the Staffords for years, and that Gardiner faked Daniel's attacks in order to keep the Police away from Terry's criminal activities. Gardiner is caught in stray gunfire and a creepy Keats ushers her into sleep.
     Gardiner was an interesting character for the most part, introducing a female presence into CID that due to the main cast's platonic relationships hasn't ever really shown up. For a while it seemed as if Gardiner would be joining the main crew; well, for a few seconds, anyway - that is, before the realisation that they're not going to introduce a new cast member only four episodes away from the finale and that the character was being obviously sneaky. It's an unfortunate sign that after the incredible creativity of the second series, the Bonanza is losing steam and writer efforts to present us with an epic finale are overshadowing the other episodes of the series.

Keats ushers Gardiner into death.

     There were a few character moments here of there that stood out, but they were sporadic at best. Chris's decision, after hearing Gardiner's claim of rape, to go down to the cells and beat up Daniel Stafford, showed his character's attempts to show heroism, but otherwise are completely at odds with what the character has always stood for - trying to follow the modern ways presented by Sam and be a good copper. That's the key to an overall problem with this series, that despite the sporadic historical references (including one to the vandalisation of the Blue Peter Garden this week), it could still be set in the modern era without changing a lot. The best of these character moments was no doubt Jim's final rites upon Gardiner, which is foreshadowing of the most blatant towards his role in Alex and Sam's world.
      Like most of the episodes in this series so far, there have been a few good elements to what are fundamentally flawed stories. 3.4 didn't fail to captivate; it just didn't do anything particularly interesting until the final few minutes, and that's a worrying trend in a series that beforehand has shown such creativity and skill. Onward towards the finale, I say, and try to ignore the next few weeks of dullness.

Thanks.
 

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.3

Ray faces down his idol.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Three
Written 23/6/12
"Show me that you've got the balls to go and arrest Andrew Smith"

Increasing the comparisons with Lost, this episode took another centric look, this time at Ray. Due to that character's relative longevity it was a much stronger effort, as well as a dark look at the politics and concequences of the Falklands War and of the 1983 election. It did a lot more with the mythos and the characters were a lot more well developed, and it also made the viewer question themself for the first time in a while.
     It's nearing Election Day, and the CID are alerted to a series of arsons targeting politically important locations. At the site of one of the fires, Ray goes into the flames to rescue someone trapped inside. Coming to his rescue is Andy Smith, a fireman who's just returned from the Falklands and is suffering from shell-shock. Under pressure from Special Branch to catch the arsonist before the Election, the team are forced to confront Ray's history when Andy becomes the main suspect in the investigation. Tracking him down after several false starts, Ray give an impassioned monologue that convinces Smith to give himself up and that allows Ray to feel confident in his father's pride, as well as getting a magicky Life-On-Mars-Music Moment.
      Ray on his own is a much more confident character, albeit a much more schizophrenic one. In his early incarnation in the first series of Life On Mars, he was the blind servant of Gene, taking his traits and emphasising them. He got a bit of development half-way-through Series Two, but his road to development didn't start until Ashes To Ashes, and even then it was very much depending on the writer; in some places we saw a more desperate, sensitive side, and elsewhere we saw an army-obsessed supporter of the old ways. This episode does what last week should have done and combined all of those loose character threads to give us one consistant characterisation - one that, for the first time, I really liked.

This centric episode was better than the last for the sole
reason that Ray is a better character overall.

     The anti-villain of the piece is memorable for two reasons. Andrew Smith happens to be my name, and so the quoted exclamation gave me a right chuckle. The other, of course, is the fact that this is the most interesting enemy we've had in the entire bonanza. He's a man with a Hero complex - he's angry at the Government, still shell-shocked after what happened in the war - conflicting between his desperation to seek justice and his desire to help people. He set buildings on fire with his military expertise and then saved people's lives inside them.
     3.3 was an awesome piece of characterisation, and really got the series going. Ray got the first real piece of characterisation he's ever had, and that made for a brilliant examination of the Falklands War and its fighters. Although often it could be a bit slow, that worked in its favour as the conflict built and built and payed off in a monologue that will go down in the series' history.

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.2

Shaz spends the episode uneasy about her
future in the force.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Two
Written 18/6/12 

Shaz is a weird character in terms of the series' relationship to its predecessor. There the "chick" was most definitely Annie Cartwright, and she remained rather in the background for both series of Life On Mars. It's a nice sign that as we near the end this second episode of the series delivers us with a Shaz-centric episode in the style of Lost (not the first comparison I'll be making) and improves her character in an interesting and complex way. It also consolidated a few things from the premiere; mainly Jim Keats characterisation and some of the series' main motifs.
     With construction work at CID making everyone irritated, the crew are sent a hand in the post branded with a crescent moon. Trawling through past cases, they discover a string of women killed and branded, then buried in waste ground in several spots around the country. Shaz starts feeling off and everyone notices. Further investigation reveals that all of the victims were divorcees and went to the same dating agency, one that has just happened to have opened a new branch in Fenchurch; Alex and Gene plan to infiltrate it. Alex talks to Shaz, who confides in her that she doesn't feel like being a policewoman is what she was meant to do. The next day, when they find the body corresponding with the hand, Shaz runs off.
     Trying to find the killer, Alex invents speed dating, getting a chance to look at all of the male clients who responded to her form, which was designed to match the victims. This is mostly played for comedy, which is a shame, except when she meets the unassuming real killer and later Jim Keats. Keats himself has tried to convince Shaz to leave the force, and she announces her resignation the next day. On the way home, she attempts to confront a gang of youths but they threaten her with the chisel that she was frightened of earlier in the day and she is completely shaken. Trying to maintain her support, the Guv puts her on the mission to catch the killer - a man with only a few months to live, who decided to spend those months taking metaphorical vengeance on his ex-wife. For her bravery, Shaz is promoted to plain clothes and has a weird moment of "Life On Mars Music" epiphany.

The bitter murderer.

     The problem with Shaz's character is that beforehand she had Chris to rely on for emotional support. We're never clued into the reasons why they split up between seasons, especially when their get-together in the Series Two finale was such an important moment for them. It feels like it's been put there specifically to create drama, and that makes the series a little transparent. The chisel motif makes a direct reference to the finale, which we won't get into here, but it would have been more fun to have had that motif running throughout all three seasons for a better payoff.
     Other than that, there's impressively little to say about this Shaz-centric episode. Nothing really stood out or wowed me; just the introduction of a few motifs. The main plot was predictable and uninteresting, the background plot hasn't really picked up any steam yet and it's pretty much disappointment all round. Better luck next time?

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.1

Alex asks herself what is real.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode One
Written 13/4/12

The first piece of TV I really talked about on this site was the final ever episode of Ashes To Ashes. For me, it's a little strange to come back to that, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. After a mind-boggling cliff-hanger that left the nation on the edge of their seats, the first episode of this series had to give us answers. While it didn't manage exactly that, it did set up the unique world of this final series that would lead to a shocking revelation about the Bonanza's world.
     Still living in a comatose 2010, Alex starts to feel disconnected from the present, culminating in a scene in a Tesco-extra where she sees the rest of the gang on TV screens and then wakes up, hair permed, in 1983, after having a hallucination of her 2010 hospital bed and a mutilated young police officer. Gene, having been blamed for her shooting, has just returned from Spain and woke her up to clear his name. Back in CID, and Ray has been promoted to DI in both the Guv and Alex's absence. As the team work on a kidnapping case, Gene is held back by officer Jim Keats (the excellent, excellent Daniel Mays), an independant officer trying to bring Gene down and who has information for Alex about the disappearance of Sam Tyler eight years prior. Despite Keats' warnings, Gene still trys to keep involved in the case when he discovers that the evidence points towards supposedly incapacitated gangster Gary Soaper. After an unsuccessful sting, they continue to investigate and discover that one of Soaper's assosciates has seen him only very recently. Using the girl's stepmother, who used to be Soaper's wife, they track down the girl to an abandoned factory and the team save the day. Back at CID, and Keats calls for celebration before going into Gene's office and going on a seething tirade about how much hatred he has for the entire department.
     Daniel Mays is deliciously devious as Jim Keats, flipping between a quiet, amiable persona and a desperate, seething rage. The character is elusive and interesting, and the first clues of his true nature are already here - he knows every word of the Bible, he's "a superstitious person" and he doesn't like the cold. Mays makes his presence known immediately and it's a captivating performance as we're unsure as to who is the villain - him, or Gene himself. The rest of the characters are fine, but there's a silly thing where Chris and Shaz have seperated in between series. After the buildup that it garnered in Series Two, it's a real waste to see it just brushed aside for little-to-no reason.

Daniel Mays' Jim Keats is a delicious performance.

     The plot itself was tense enough, with the revelation of the old gangster being an interesting reveal. The tragedy of Maggie Soaper added a nice poignancy to the episode, but that didn't stop the victim's dad from coming off as a bit of a knob. Half-way through the story Chris randomly brought in a countdown timer which served entirely to provide tension, which really felt like a cheap-shot to me. Other than that, it was Ashes To Ashes as usual.
     3.1 was an ok start to this final series, and it did all it needed to do in introducing to us the main themes and motifs that this series would have to offer. What it didn't do was satisfyingly answer last series' cliffhanger, and instead seemed only to create more questions than it answered. Overall though, it did leave me excited for the final series and for this series of reviews.

Thanks.

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.8

Gene reads Alex's story for Jackanory.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Eight
Written Saturday 10th March 2012

Like Lost, the deep-set rot of its final series stretches into the preceeding one. Luckily for Ashes To Ashes, that amounts to thirty-seconds' worth of runtime, and 2.8 is the best of the five finales in the Bonanza. The way that it treats its characters and themes makes it stand as a perfect send off to by far the most engaging and powerful eight episodes that this cast ever produced. If Series One was about showing how Life On Mars could work in the Eighties, then Series Two showed us that the team had the balls to back that up.
      Over the TV, the surgeons on Alex's end announce that having removed the bullet, an infection has set in. She has to fight the infection while they administer 50ml of strong anti-biotics. In this world, Gene has discovered from several sources that a massive blag is about to happen. A criminal that Gene has interrogated turns up tortured and killed, and when they find the killer he inadvertantly reveals that the blag is Operation Rose, a bullion robbery wherein corrupt police officers will take the gold for themselves. Things are going swimmingly, until Summers leaves one of Alex's tapes on Gene's desk, in which she laments being in the Coma world. Alex comes clean to Gene about her true nature, but Gene refuses to believe her and this creates mistrust between them.
      After being contacted again by Summers over the phone, Alex helps Chris to redeem himself after last week by playing the double agent and giving them info on Operation Rose. Alex now remembers the robbery from 2008 and points to Douglas Road, but after the machinations of a female suspect called Jennette, Gene refuses to believe her. Alex, fighting to destroy the infection in her mind, tracks the team as the heist happens, and when it inevitably does turn towards Douglas Road it's her advice that leads to Gene and the Gang being there in time. As Summers is about to shoot Alex, Gene shoots him and the full 50mls are finally administered. Jennette, in on the operation, hold Alex hostage and in Gene's attempt to save her he instead manages to shoot her in the stomach. She wakes up, seemingly in the present, with Molly at her side. As the episode ends, we see that she isn't out of the woods yet; Gene appears on all of the TV screens telling her that she's in a coma, and needs to wake up.

Welcome to the mindfuck.

     At the time, we all thought that this was going to be the last episode of Ashes to Ashes, and of the Bonanza. The mindfuck ending changed this dramatically and despite how much I hate it, it is an accomplishment in British TV that Ashes To Ashes was able to pull it off. Regardless, it ruins what is otherwise an excellent ending, an ending that the character deserved after a series as dark as this one. On the other hand, the series still had one loose end - the much deserved reconcilliation of Gene and Alex after their disagreement. Because of this, the third series had to pretend to offer answers only by creating mysteries, much like a supermarket that has to bring up its prices to offer a 5% off sale.
      And really, as well head into the shitstorm that is Series Three on Friday, I just have to say that it's been great. It really has. Glenister, Hawes, Lancaster, Andrews and Lombard have acted their arses off and the writing has been absolutely superb beyond belief. Series Two of Ashes To Ashes will always be my favourite series of the Bonanza, and I'm eternally grateful for it. Of course, this just makes the tragedy of what happened next even worse. See you on Fridays, where I begin Series Three.

Thanks.
 

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.7

Martin Summers' traps start to close in on CID.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Seven

While it began in a mediocre way, 2.7 evolved into a list of the reasons why I adore this fourth series of the Bonanza. It was very dark and a lot of it didn't make sense when you really thought about it, but because of the strength of this series' characters and of this arc, it pulled through and ended with a spectacularly written and acted final few scenes. Last week may have been a dip in the series, but this episode uplifts us back to an excellent standard.
    After chasing a drugs gang based on an anonymous tip-off, CID find a Polish man buried in concrete at a building site. Excavation reveals that the man was murdered, but the site mananger Michael Rafferty denies any involvement. Police officer Martin Summers (the young version of the corrupt cop from 2008 that has been manipulating Alex) comes in to tell Gene that Rafferty is bad news, and Rafferty claims that Summers is the one in the wrong, having come asking for a bribe in exchange for his safety. Alex follows a note sent by the 2008 Summers and meets the young Summers at the building site. There, Old!Summers shoots his younger self, shattering Alex's preconceptions about this world and making her have nightmares wherein her parents tell her that she should have tried harder to save their lives. Old!Summers puts the gun in her hand, leaving her to clean up by dropping the Young!Summers corpse into some conveniently wet concrete.
     A vital piece of evidence goes missing in the investigation, and the signature on the release form is that of Summers. Knowing that the young Summers is dead, Alex reveals that the perpetrator must be a member of CID. Still bitter after the Mac scandal, Gene goes on the warpath. He gives Chris, Ray, Chaz and Vic the number of a vault at an open storage building, knowing that if one of them is a traitor, then Rafferty will go there and open a specific vault. He does so, and that evening Alex joins gene as he confronts the traitor - Chris. Feeling pressured by the wedding, Chris has been working for a voice over the phone as far back as Episode 2, trying to get the money to pay back a loan. He was the one who destroyed Kevin Hales' records, stopping the team from preventing his eventual murder and postponing their discovery of Mac's operation. Gene forgives Chris on one condition - that he never leave the police force, and forever live with his shame. Alex tracks back the phone number to a small flat - and discovers that Summers has been manipulating events from the beginning.

Chris is forced to reveal his betrayal.

     The first half of the episode wasn't as engaging as I would have liked it to have been, not really covering any themes other than the usual undercurrant of Police Corruption. Like in 2.5, Alex acted the psycho again and started attacking someone who didn't know her, but the cards really fell onto the table when Old and Young Summers met. It felt like a direct response from the writers, saying that this isn't really a Time Travel show and at the same time allowing Alex to show a real depth to her character. It was a final seperation from the world of Life On Mars, and a preview towards the more religiously-oriented finale next series. Unlike that finale, however, this is far from disappointing.
      The second half provided some outstanding drama and a real chance for Marshall Lancaster, who usually plays the bumbling comic relief, to give some actual emotions. Despite how surprising it was, it makes so much sense and also neatly ties the otherwise irrelevant Shaz and Chris storyline into the main arc. Adrian Dunbar is so strong as Summers, with his charming but equally sinister voice and demeanor, that he's easily one of the most memorable villains in the Bonanza. His existance as a malevolent entity is completely at odds with the Mars finale, where Gene was the force to be fought, and shows not only how much the characters have grown, but also how much the writing has moved on since the simple caricatures of Life On Mars' first series.

Gene is disappointed in Chris.

      Episode 2.7 was a due reminder of how good the Bonanza can be, and showed off this series characters and themes in a way that left me gagging for the finale. It may have a had a bit of a shitty first half, but the second half made up for it thousandfold and stands as some of the best Ashes To Ashes ever made.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.6

Riley is a mobster-esque loan shark.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Six

I suppose there really isn't any "light relief" in a crime drama focussed around murder and mayhem, but this was definitely one of them, taking a solid independant story that didn't touch the arc and giving us a break from thick mythos before the finalé arrives. Its issues mainly surrounded a lack of focus and tension, but it delivered some interesting character dynamics which more than made up for it.
     CID happen upon a body floating on a canal and identify it as Colin Mitchell, a man reported missing by his wife Donna (Daisy Haggerd) several days before. Alex is being operated upon in the Overworld, and she's feeling the strain as the doctors remove the bullet from her brain. Leader of the neighbourhood watch and Colin's father Stanley Mitchell tells them that a distinct mark on the body indicates local loan shark Riley, who beat him up previously. Colin was working for Riley, but left the organisation and was killed soon after.
     With little evidence, the team raid Riley's organisation and find a sex-tape of Riley and Donna; Donna explains that she was fulfilling Riley's debt demands in return for Colin's safety. Angry at Gene's intrusion, Riley sends men round to attack both he and Alex. While Alex escapes unscathed, Gene is beat up and the following day his ego is clearly badly damaged. Following a path of retribution he traps Riley in a car and begins to crush the car with a crane - just in time for Alex and Ray to use psych profiling to work out the real killer. Together they confront Stanley, who reveals that he killed his son in a fit of rage after discovering him working for Riley and then used the murder to frame him.

Gene excercises retribution... imaginatively.

     Like last week, there was a lot of good character work. Ray explored his more mental side, while Chris and Shaz's relationship fell on a rocky patch. Their relationship has never really felt that realistic to me, and just felt like a way of giving the show's least interesting characters some unique trait. Daisy Haggerd is best known for her comic acting, and at times it did feel a little forced when she spontaneously burst into tears. The best performance of the piece was definitely Phillip Glenister, who managed to channel his usual aggression into a bitter, seething anger that made his revenge all the sweeter.
      It wasn't exactly first-rate, but it was an interesting week that felt relatively chilled before next week's mythos-filled pre-finalé episode.  It wasn't so much a whodunnit as it was a "hedunnitbutshedunnitbuthedunnit," and that ultimately left me a little empty, but Alex's predicament left open a long trail of hope to lead us into the stormy end of what we thought was going to be the penultimate episode.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.5

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Five

After a relatively different first half of the series, we take a sojurn back to the style of Life On Mars, albeit wth a touch of this new, more politically focussed angle. While it had a few of the issues that Ashes To Ashes always has in its attempt to blend the Coma World with the Real World, the focus on the Operation Rose line made the episode that much more powerful, as well as some great character work for Ray.
     While Gene is trying to get the papers off of the corruption case, Alex is there to witness the deafening of her future father-in-law, Brian Drake, in a mugging. After being a complete and total psychopath towards her currently-14 future husband Peter Drake, she exercises her interest with the family by trying to find the mugger. Gene is disinterested, and Ray intends to join the Army, but their interest is peaked when the DNA comes back as George Stains - a criminal who's supposedly been dead for two years. Gene is put under pressure to make an arrest (with the appropriate Bowie/Queen soundtrack). Their only lead, Metal Mickey, is refusing to talk, so Alex goes to Ray, who explains to her that the outing of Mac as a bent copper has shaken his belief in policing. Ray makes Mickey talk.
     Following the fact that Stains went to Spain, they interrogate the Drakes' neighbour Gayna, who had a Spanish boyfriend. A man calling himself "Boris Johnson" leaves Alex a note to meet in Luigi's. That night he stands her up, leaving a note. Instead, Martin Summers (Adrian Dunbar) arrives late at night in CID. Summers reveals that he too is from 2008, and implies that Alex's only way out of this world is to part of the corrupt Operation Rose. George's mother inadvertantly reveals Gayna's part in the preceedings. She helps to organise a meeting with George, but she's been found to have been assaulted. After a visit to the house, Alex uncovers that it was Pete who stole the money. When they visit Gayna Mason in hospital, they find, to their surprise, that she is George Stains, who had a sex-change to escape the law. She explains that it was Pete who assaulted her that night, taking back the things she had stolen. In the end, Gene doesn't get his big headline, because he doesn't have the heart to tell George's mother.

Gayna... née George.

     As we know, this is an Alex meets Old Family episode. When Sam met his 2006 relatives in 1973, he did so with grace and light concern, but rarely let it crowd his judgement after the events of his abandonment. When Alex meets a her 2008 relatives, she does so with the subtlety of an anvil. This is not a pleasant or logical experience. This really takes the biscuit; a mature, intellectual woman shouting profanities at a 14-year-old for things that he hasn't done. However, the episode did have some good bits; the monologue from Martin Summers was wonderful and Adrian Dunbar, finally seen after a month, does the job perfectly. Ray also got some much-needed character development regarding his disillusionment with policing.
     With the powerhouse of the Police Corruption storyline slowing down after Mac's death, 2.5 took a slight breather, but it never let up on the mystery and this is one of my favourite individual cases in this series, if only because of its sheer surprise value at the end. 2.5 wasn't as good as the past few weeks have been, but it was still some brilliantly and lovingly crafted entertainment that improved our characters.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.4

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Four. Written 18/2/12
"Once upon a time, in this room, a man drew a line. He said that police corruption was gonna become a thing of the past. That man was a liar and that man is now dead. I am gonna re-draw that line. I am not a liar. We are police officers and we will behave like police officers. We will fight, slap, knock-down, beat-up and intimidate to hold back the wave of scum. That is our right and that is our duty. But if I find one man feathering his own nest, by so much as one bent penny... I will destroy him."

Jackie Queen returns in time for SuperMac's final battle.

This mini-arc was slightly spoilt by its third installment, but its final segment returns to Series Two's standard of quality in a big way. It exposes a change in the writers' approach across the first and second series which, which developing Ashes To Ashes' distinct identity from its successor, has some major problems. Regardless of that, 2.4 settled this plotline in an awesome way and set us up for the second half of the series.
      Pregnant journalist Jackie Queen, a Glaswegian who we saw back in Life On Mars, arrives in CID looking for her missing niece; the most recent in a long line of Northern girls disappearing in the city. Gene follows the inquiry for old-times' sake, tracing the disappearances back to parties run by rich businessman Ralph Jarvis. For Gene and Alex, the investigation becomes serious when they discover that Jarvis is SuperMac's old school-buddy, and he is under the protection of the Masons. Gene already in the process of being sent to Plymouth, Mac tries to cover his tracks by framing Alex for embezzlement and extortion. Not to be deterred, Gene and Alex let the boys in on the investigation and go to Jarvis' mansion, discovering Mac's store of riches and arresting Jarvis for good. Mac, knowing that he has nowhere to go, kills Jarvis and committs suicide - but not before promising that Operation Rose isn't over.
     Alex makes inquiries with Jackie about Sam, which starts to show her acceptance of this world as a physical place instead of her own mind. We may have had a little explanation of this in her slowly disappearing memory of reality from 2.2, but it only serves to facilitate the purgatory ending in the next series. There is no reason why Alex should have stopped treating this world like her own hallucinations, and her attitude towards the future-knowing Summers (heard only as Adrian Dunbar) is especially strange for this very reason. So what if there's someone who knows about 1997; you're from aftere 1997, and as far as you're concerned it's your mind!

Gene gives a brilliant speech (see page quote).

     Jackie Queen's return was much more.. stereotypically handled than in Mars. Her return feels a little strange, considering that she wasn't exactly a major character to begin with. Here the writers end up concocting some bs about Gene fathering her baby on a drunken night out, before revealing later that no such thing happened. It felt a little Soap-Opera-ish, but that allowed the characters to have a bit of fun with their personalities and overall I thought that it was one of the episode's best features. I would have liked to see Phyllis the Secretary back, but we all have to make concessions in life.
     SuperMac's final hour was a much more well-written police-corruption story than was explored in Life On Mars' second series. It summed up the demi-series with a satisfying bang, and its development of the characters has been unlike anything the Bonanza manages anywhere else. I've loved reviewing this series so far, and I wholeheartedly look on to the second half of the series.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.3

David Bradley is the episode's only strong performance.

Though not as lively as last week, 2.3 continued a run of good-quality Ashes To Ashes, taking a lot of the themes set up so far and developing them. Mainly it was a Life on Mars-style setup of Alex fighting against an exterior force through the metaphor of her dreamscape, something that Ashes To Ashes is not in the favour of doing. Ultimately it was an issue that made the episode that small rung lower than the norm, but it didn't at all affect my enjoyment of this week's story.
     A scientist in charge of a Vivisection Lab arrives in CID, his daughter having discovered a dismembered rabbit as a warning from an Animal-Rights radicalist. On their way out, a radicalist on a motorcycle attacks the father and daughter with a bomb, leading Gene to pick up the case. With no leads, Alex focuses on convicted radicalist Robin Elliot (the excellent David Bradley, who excells in everything he's in).
     Robin knows more than he's telling, but even with the assistance of his old friend Jeremy he doesn't reveal anything. After a University Shooting Gene catches Adrian, a younger radicalist, but attacks are still taking place. After Robin's hunger strike sends him into hospital, Alex gets the last piece of the puzzle - a letter leading back to Robin's old friend Jeremy. He had been part of the events that Robin was arrested for seven years prior, and Robin was blackmailing him into comitting the radicalist acts.
     In the arc storyline, Kevin Hales is found to have committed suicide in his cell, something that Alex and Gene are suspicious of. Although Gene doesn't suspect that Supermac will go as far as murder, the rogue Superintendant tells Gene as a "brother" to amend the initial arrest files to mark Hales as suicidal. Gene refuses, and at the end of the episode SuperMac informs him of his transfer to Plymouth.

 

 

 

     It was fun, I suppose. It felt clever, in places. But it didn't really feel like anything new, and the angle of Alex fighting to stay alive felt like an unnecessary hangover from Life On Mars that I thought Series Two could have avoided. Even the arc storyline played out in a particularly predictable way; luckily that will change next week. That didn't stop the characters from being enjoyable, but they didn't go anywhere in particular.
     Episode 2.3 carried on a few themes from last week and was certainly enjoyable and interesting, but the characters and plotlines moved in predictable ways. The only stand-out thing is David Bradley's performance, which is magnificent. In this, the 27th Hour of the Bonanza, there are some things that we know not to do, and 2.3 did them. A real disappointment.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.2

Jed did a barrel roll.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode Two

One thing now immediately obvious from my so-far two episode wander in to the Fourth Series of the Bonanza is that after Ashes To Ashes' shakey start, the producers finally know how to milk the concepts at hand for all they're worth. Unlike previous series, Series Two is a nest of golden continuity. Its themes are cohesive and flowing, its characterisations are delicious and the soundtrack is the best it's ever been. 2.2 struck at the heart of this series' core themes and did so with a gusto that has made me that much more excited for the rest of the Bonanza.
      The episode began with a trip to a group of Travellers, where known criminal Jed Wicklow flipped his car after having a shunt from Gene in a car chase. Jed left behind his abused and pregnant girlfriend Elva, who is currently being looked after by the swarthy Dr. Battleford. While there are whispers of conspiracy to cover up Gene's possible implication in his death, Alex finds evidence that implicates Battleford - who replies to Gene's follow-up with a certain type of handshake. While Gene is secretive and holds Alex at arm's length, she undergoes her own investigation. On the side, she begins to realise that her memories of 2008 are slipping away from her.

Gene joins the Masons.

     After a pile of evidence against Battleford is ignored, Alex follows Gene one night and finds him joining the Masons. The next day, with the evidence against him set in concrete, Gene confides to Alex that he is aware of the wide-spread corruption within the Met and needed to infiltrate the Freemasons to discover how far up it went. Using the newly discovered fact that the barely-over-age Elva's baby belongs to Battleford, Gene has him arrested and sent down. As SuperMac barely lets it slide, Gene and Alex look ahead to battling the Masons' influence. And finally, in other developments; Alex speaks to the man who abducted her last week, Chris proposes to Chaz and Kevin Hales has disappeared from prison.
     So far I'm loving the characterisations in this series. Gene gets to become a complex human being instead of a shouty caricature, and his internal conflict over the Masons is one of the best parts of the episode. Alex is also acting more like a real person than she did in the last series, and all is well. Much praise has to go to Dean Andrews, whose Ray this week became much more angry and sinister due to both his involvement in the Masons and the escalating reports of the Falklands' War, and Roger Allam as SuperMac. SuperMac is a brilliant villain - creepy and unnerving, but with that hint of authority that gives him a commanding presence in every scene he's in.

Gene ignores the will of the Masons.

       The Bonanza has covered Police Corruption approximately four times prior to this series, but here we really get the final say on the matter. 2.2 delved into the world of the Masons and explored it through characterisation rather than Mars' sudden shock revelation that Harry Woolf was crooked. It was also a great way of developing Ray and Chris as characters; the former to demonstrate the ubiquity of the issue as well as the character's own neuroses, and the latter in his complete rejection of the Cult in the name of love. It's really quite touching.
       Because of its continuity, its deeply-written themes and its excellent use of characterisations, the second episode of Ashes To Ashes' sophomore series far exceeds everything else that the show has done before. The examination of Police Corruption through the different viewpoints of Alex and Gene was absolutely stunning, and I admit that I loved every second.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 2.1

Sally from Hyde dies in Gene's arms.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Two, Episode One

The second series of Ashes To Ashes is certainly more slick from a production side of things. The Eighties music from 1982 is even more atmospheric, and the direction has been cleaned right up. This series is my favouirte from the entire bonanza, because for the first time it has a series arc completely seperate from Alex's shenanigans.
     While there's news on the outside of Alex's discovery, the team discover a police officer strung up from the ceiling in Soho, apparently a victim of autoerotic asphyxiation. There's only one piece of evidence - a polaroid of the victim and a female friend. The group is under pressure to find out who's responsible from Superintendant Mackintosh (SuperMac, played by Roger Allam), who Alex likes for his progressionist attitude. They question the stripper from the photo, who Gene tries to protect because of her Mancunian heritage. The dead police officer's best friend, P.C. Kevin Hales, is incredibly concerned about his friend's death.
     The coroner's report comes back with date-rape drugs in his blood and signs of being forced down. When they talk to the stripper again, she is shot by an unseen assailant. Her death spurs Gene on. They question the policeman's wife again, who was playing away with SuperMac. Alex finds a rose on her desk with a note congratulating her on being found. Looking on evidence for Hale, Alex finds photos with the word Pont de L'alma - the place where Diana died in 1997, although Alex won't realise this for a while. They talk to Hale again, and get nothing.

Does SuperMac want to clean up the Force, or rule over it?

       The copper's wife comes to speak to Gene outside the station, "where the walls don't have ears." Her house has been raided, and she realises that it was probably their husband's diary that they were looking for. As Alex heads out on her own, the team find Hales' faint face in the polaroid, proving he knew something. Someone attacks Alex with chloroform, and she wakes up under surgery lights in a scene that teases her return to reality. Her kidnapper sends sounds of her scream to CID, and teases Alex about why she's in 1982 instead of the present. Gene fínds her as her kidnapper escapes. Alex and Gene go to arrest Hale, but he's been tipped off and is armed and drunk. Alex talks him down, and after they found that Hale has been accepting bribes, and is part of a larger conspiracy.
     Episode 2.1 begins the new angle of Police Corruption in a way that's incredibly entertaining. Unlike the arcs from the previous three series, which consisted of hallucinations, this feels more intriguing sheerly because the clues are there for us to follow. And, for the first time, there's an arc from both Alex and Gene's perspective; Gene is treated like a character in his own right and is all the better for it.
      Unfortunately, the set-up of these two new arcs made it nearly impossible for there to be a cohesive mystery, and so the episode jumped around between a set of people before the hasty explanation of the plot in the endscene. The only thing that really made it unique was the more overt commentary of the objectification of women and the tie-in to the Police Corruption plot that will be rumbling on throughout this series.

Alex receives anonymous letters from someone aware of her
true home.

      The first episode of this series got off to a great start, but its main story was distracted by two incredibly well-executed set-ups for this series' arcs. It could have had a much stronger central concept but everything else is on top form - characterisation, direction and certainly storytelling, as we advance upon one of the Bonanza's strongest series.

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Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 1.8

Alex's Dad returns from America, just in time for his death.

Ashes To Ashes - Series One, Episode Eight

Alex's initial storyline in the first series of Ashes To Ashes mirror's Sam's first series - having to deal with unexpected truths surrounding childhood traumas. While Sam's father left, Alex's committed Murder-Suicide using an explosion that she was lucky to escape. The finale of the first series tackles this issue with the usual heavy-handedness that Ashes often shows, and that's a bit of a shame, especially as the series was plagued from the beginning by incredibly repetitious flashbacks to the event.
      The day of judgement has come. In her efforts to prevent her parents' deaths, Alex visited Arthur Layton, the man who shot her in 2008 and whom she arrested in 1.1. She gets no info from him, and so pretends to have been given info by an informant upon their deaths. Meanwhile, a Police Chief called Lord Scarman (Geoffrey Palmer, wonderful man) is planning to visit the station. Alex goes to visit her father, having just returned from America, in court. She tells him to leave London, but he ignores her. Alex then gets the idea to destroy the car they died in, finding the car belonging to her "Uncle Angus". Angus is part of a gay-pride parade, and so Alex drives a pink tank over it.
     As Scarman inspects the station, Alex tries to seal the deal on her parents' survival. Ray brings her new info; the Prices have had contact with Layton. She visits him again, and he shows awareness but refuses to give any answers. At the station, members of the gay pride parade are being put in the emptied cells along with Chris. At wit's end, Alex tries planting drugs on the Prices, and has them put in the cells as well - in front of Lord Scarman, who is distinctly unimpressed. In fact, he asks to be put in a cell to experience prisoners' treatment. Alex's mother speaks with her and discusses how she wants to take time off from work to spend time with the young Alex.

Scarman inspects the station.

      Alex has dinner with Gene, as her "Last Supper". After Gene gives Scarman a talking down, Alex soon discovers that her entire plan has collapsed; the Prices have been let out and Evan has released Layton from jail on Tim Price's authority. Alex travels to the scene and watches in horror as her parents are killed - she realises soon after that it was her father who orchestrated the whole thing, having discovered his wife's affair and unable to live with himself. Her father, in the end, was The Clown that had haunted her. Gene saved her life as a child, not Evan.
      Like Mars, episodes that follow the series' arc in the Bonanza tend not to be very strong plot-wise. In my opinion, the only time that it really payed off was in the next series, which was a serious game-changer. Episode 1.8 replaced that with a hefty deal of emotion, but at times it did feel like the episode was struggling to find places to go. The whole gay-pride parade was a welcome bit of comic relief, but it didn't feel right when one considers the seriousness with which Alex is going about her task.
     Unlike its predecessor, each series of Ashes has a definite villain, and of the three Tim Price/The Clown is by far the best. Leaving Tim's first clear appearance until now was a very clever move, as the character is very unnerving even when not as The Clown. While evocative of The Test Card Girl from Mars' first series, The Clown establishes the series' unique identity while continuing to tie it to the Bowie roots. Layton, who makes his final appearance, is also a really fun villain due to his semi-awareness of Alex's true identity.

Tim Price is the Clown.

       The finale to Ashes To Ashes' first series has its issues, but overall it was better than the series' average. The tie-up for Alex's origin story is wonderfully done and it is, for me, rather moving. Series One of Ashes To Ashes had a lot of problems regarding scripts and dialogue, but in its second half it developed its own style and became just as entertaining as its predecessor.

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