Sunday 21 March 2010

Ashes to ashes : dust to dust

It's been announced that the third and final series of the time-travelling cop show Ashes to Ashes will begin on 2 April.

We are promised that this series will wrap up the franchise while providing answers to what it, along with the previous series of Life on Mars, have been about. I'm not sure I need answers, especially if it involves retro-fitting a different meaning to Life on Mars, but the advance publicity that's come out so far sounds mostly promising. The synopsis for the first episode suggests that the story won’t be spending any time explaining away the season 2 cliffhanger in which Alex appeared to wake up in the present day, or then again did she? So it'd appear that was a red herring. There's apparently some new mysteries added and we're promised that a major character will die early on, although the unsubtle hints as to who it is means that's not as exciting as it sounds.

The most promising development is that the writers say the show will resemble season 5 of Life on Mars and that the two shows will gradually morph into each other. Exactly how that'll be done isn’t clear, but it's known that several bit part characters from the earlier series will re-appear and a major plot strand this year will be Alex attempting to find out how Sam Tyler died. I'm tempted to shout, 'he jumped off a tall building, Alex. That probably did it!', but it seems we're dealing with his mysterious fantasy death in the fantasy world so there's sure to be more to it than that.

The big decision I'll have to make is whether I fancy writing reviews of the episodes again. I banged on for well over ten thousand words on season 2 last year, but I'm not sure if I feel so committed this year and I will be away when some of the episodes air. I'll think about it. For now there's an uninteresting preview clip from episode 1 on youtube, and apparently there was an 'hilarious skit' TM shown on some charityathon tv give-out-of-work-celebrities-something-to-do promotional thingy. I wish they wouldn’t do that.

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