I had a bit of a head rush when I got up from the sofa after watching TV for four solid hours, and suddenly, it was 2006 and all anyone was talking about was a time-warp series called Life on Mars. It was confusing: not just all that 2006 music and fashion, but not knowing who on earth “Sam Tyler” was, or even “Gene Hunt”, when these characters from a 1970s cop show seemed to dominate every conversation. Was I mad, in a coma, or a time traveller? Or just really, really out of it?
I recovered, with the help of the internet and some well-meaning friends, to get the hang of one of the biggest TV hits of recent years. But with the premiere of Ashes to Ashes, the 1980s cop show spin-off to Life on Mars, on BBC One last night, I was determined to follow slavishly so I too could fit in down the pub. But, what's this? Before Ashes to Ashes even aired, the buzz was all about how it wasn't as good as the old days, you know, way back in 2006 and 2007.
The format was tired, the replacement lead, now a woman called Alex Drake, couldn't compare, and the tough guy-turned-cult hero Gene Hunt had lost his best lines. Never go back, they said. Strong stuff for fans of a series about revisiting the past.
Actually the right advice would be “don't compare”. Of course, Ashes to Ashes will never have the impact of the original. But let's focus on the positives. First Keeley Hawes is truly wonderful as Alex Drake, an extremely difficult part to pull off. Not just as a follow-up act, but because the plot required her to convince us of quite some preposterousness.
Drake is a detective who specialises in psychological profiling, and, also a supposedly devoted single mother. The episode opened with her daughter nearly killed at the hands of an evil psycho. Although this was also the girl's birthday, Drake didn't hug her rescued child close, but got rid of her by saying that she had a “stack of reports” to fill in, “life's tough” and all that. A few minutes later, the same killer psycho turned up in the back of Drake's car and shot her in the head. Drake came round from her blackout, only to find herself transported back to 1981. Ultravox was playing, and men wore pastel.
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Somehow - and boy, is this a Rada audition and a half - Hawes managed to make credible the fact that she spent the rest of the hour lurching around in a hooker's skirt, in charge of a 1980s police drugs bust, fainting and having deranged fits by turns. Life on Mars virgins may have found the going a little tough by this point. It helps that Hawes has that Helen Mirren-esque intelligence that humanises her toughness without weakening it.
Personally, I prefer the idea of a woman as the lead. Yes, she has to play along with the male delusion, so common in TV and film, of chemistry between her and a horrible old codger (one of Hunt's first lines: “Blimey, if your skirt was hitched any higher, I'd see what you had for breakfast”). But Drake livens up what was an oppressive laddishness to Life on Mars.
This has a downside. Life on Mars took the 1970s cop show The Sweeney as its inspiration, while the source materials for Ashes to Ashes are the considerably less cool Moonlighting, Dempsey and Makepeace and Miami Vice. All of these 1980s classics were a bit silly, and whenever Ashes to Ashes has much in the way of plot, it gets even sillier (baddies running around clutching sacks of cocaine, Hunt cruising to the rescue in a commandeered speedboat).
Add to this appearances of the Pierrot clown, escaped from the David Bowie Ashes to Ashes video, and you have a serious problem of tone. All the ostentatious 1980s visual bingo - the tennis girl poster, tick! phonecards, tick! - and the slapstick plot, gets in the way of the darker elements. A shame, because that is what will hold our interest.
The fact that the new show is set in the Metropolitan Police in 1981, year of Brixton riots, hints at a compelling theme: the unthinking racism of Life on Mars finally brought to book. And hopefully, the pace will slow to take full advantage of Hawes, giving her inner turmoil much more room to breathe. If the show can focus on these last two, I think it may win Life on Mars loyalists round. Because, for all that disappoints and surprises about Ashes to Ashes, it has one very good, and very 1980s, thing going for it: ambition.