Rising from the Ashes
Fire up the Quattro! Gene Hunt and the gang are back on the job
In a dingy police station, CID desks are festooned with cigarette butts, Rubik’s Cubes and electric typewriters. Green Cross Code posters adorn the walls as detectives in stonewashed jeans with highlights in their hair mill around. Meanwhile, down the corridor, DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) is displaying his usual bull-in-a-china-shop method of interrogation and is cheerfully throwing a suspect against a wall. We are, of course, on the set of BBC 1’s 1980s-set time-travel crime drama, ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The second series moves on a year to 1982 – the year of the Falkland’s War – and finds modern day cop DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) aka Bolly Knickers’, in the Hunt vernacular, still battling to get home to the present day to be reunited with her daughter.
“Lots of things have changed for Alex,” says Keeley Hawes, who is sporting lashings of blue mascara and a new Cagney & Lacey-style hairdo, as we chat during a break in filming. “She arrived as this know it all but had the rug pulled out from under her. She is settling into life in the 1980s now so the line has started to blur about what her reality is and whether the future just exists in her mind or whether it actually happened. She still knows she has to get back though, and maybe she does…”
While Alex has undergone some changes, her old sparring partner Gene Hunt remains his deliciously un-PC self. Although the first series came in for some criticism for lacking the originality of Life on Mars from which it was spawned, Philip Glenister, who joins us in Hunt’s trademark suit and crocodile skin boots, believes the new eight part run has upped the ante.
“We’re finding our way and trying to fit Gene into the context of the 1980s, which was difficult because, essentially, he’s a 1970s character,” he says. “It was always going to be a tough call to follow up Life on Mars and we knew there would be a backlash. The first series was a little be cheesy so we’ve made it darker this time.”
Much of that darkness comes from a hard-hitting police corruption plot that runs right through the new series and threatens to tear the team apart. “It affects the whole morale of CID and really highlights that period when the police were very low down in the estimations of the public and press,” says Glenister. “In a way, Gene is there to try and redeem the role of the cop because, although his is morally ambiguous, he bends the rules more than he breaks them.”
Glenister’s adamant that a future third series will be his last and the cast were recently informed how the series will ultimately conclude, including exactly why Alex is stuck in the past and how events from Life on Mars tie in. “We know the ending and ti’s really good, but all our theories were wrong,” laughs Hawes.
Before then, though, there is still much more of the 1980s to enjoy; the decade’s outlandish fashions and music feature in abundance in the new series, with guest appearances from TV legends of the era including Morph, Roland Rat and Mrs McClusky from Grange Hill.
And, of course, that ultimate 1980s icon, Hunt’s flame-red Audi Quattro is also back on the road. “I’m still driving it, but the suspension isn’t great when you’ve got four people, two camera and lots of gear strapped to it,” says Glenister. “It scrapes against the ground badly and I’ve got a camera right in front of my eyes so I can’t see anything , which is a bit disconcerting!”
In a dingy police station, CID desks are festooned with cigarette butts, Rubik’s Cubes and electric typewriters. Green Cross Code posters adorn the walls as detectives in stonewashed jeans with highlights in their hair mill around. Meanwhile, down the corridor, DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) is displaying his usual bull-in-a-china-shop method of interrogation and is cheerfully throwing a suspect against a wall. We are, of course, on the set of BBC 1’s 1980s-set time-travel crime drama, ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The second series moves on a year to 1982 – the year of the Falkland’s War – and finds modern day cop DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) aka Bolly Knickers’, in the Hunt vernacular, still battling to get home to the present day to be reunited with her daughter.
“Lots of things have changed for Alex,” says Keeley Hawes, who is sporting lashings of blue mascara and a new Cagney & Lacey-style hairdo, as we chat during a break in filming. “She arrived as this know it all but had the rug pulled out from under her. She is settling into life in the 1980s now so the line has started to blur about what her reality is and whether the future just exists in her mind or whether it actually happened. She still knows she has to get back though, and maybe she does…”
While Alex has undergone some changes, her old sparring partner Gene Hunt remains his deliciously un-PC self. Although the first series came in for some criticism for lacking the originality of Life on Mars from which it was spawned, Philip Glenister, who joins us in Hunt’s trademark suit and crocodile skin boots, believes the new eight part run has upped the ante.
“We’re finding our way and trying to fit Gene into the context of the 1980s, which was difficult because, essentially, he’s a 1970s character,” he says. “It was always going to be a tough call to follow up Life on Mars and we knew there would be a backlash. The first series was a little be cheesy so we’ve made it darker this time.”
Much of that darkness comes from a hard-hitting police corruption plot that runs right through the new series and threatens to tear the team apart. “It affects the whole morale of CID and really highlights that period when the police were very low down in the estimations of the public and press,” says Glenister. “In a way, Gene is there to try and redeem the role of the cop because, although his is morally ambiguous, he bends the rules more than he breaks them.”
Glenister’s adamant that a future third series will be his last and the cast were recently informed how the series will ultimately conclude, including exactly why Alex is stuck in the past and how events from Life on Mars tie in. “We know the ending and ti’s really good, but all our theories were wrong,” laughs Hawes.
Before then, though, there is still much more of the 1980s to enjoy; the decade’s outlandish fashions and music feature in abundance in the new series, with guest appearances from TV legends of the era including Morph, Roland Rat and Mrs McClusky from Grange Hill.
And, of course, that ultimate 1980s icon, Hunt’s flame-red Audi Quattro is also back on the road. “I’m still driving it, but the suspension isn’t great when you’ve got four people, two camera and lots of gear strapped to it,” says Glenister. “It scrapes against the ground badly and I’ve got a camera right in front of my eyes so I can’t see anything , which is a bit disconcerting!”
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