It's the A-team
Is there life after Life on Mars? Ashes to Ashes co-creator Ashley Pharoah brings us up to speed on the new cop drama that time-warps into the 80s.
I’m in the Blitz club, that joyous heartbeat of new romanticism, smeared mascara and pouts. It’s London. It’s s1981. Boy George just took my coat. Steve Strange – yes, the actual Steve Strange – is up on stage singing Fade to Grey to desperately cool peacock boys and girls. Bliss. Then someone shouts, ‘Cut!’, the house lights come up and I realise that I’m actually in a cushy working men’s club in Kilburn, north London. In the middle of the morning. In 2007. And a burly man is staring at me and telling me not to stand on the cable. For this is a film set and I am a screenwriter. In the words of Talking Heads’ David Byrne, how did I get here?
Life on Mars took place entirely inside the head of coma patient Sam Tyler (John Simm), so when he jumped off that Manchester roof at the very end of the series, it’s fair to say that we all thought the destination of our strange, wonderful journey had been reached But, hugely encouraged by the critical and popular response (and with time running out as we shot the last episode), the BBC asked us if there was any way we could do a spin off, so loath were they to say goodbye to Gene Hunt and his Merry Men. To which the answer was no. Life on Mars died with Sam Tyler. None of us wanted to create a feeble version of that show and it’s captivating central dynamic; the growling old school Gene Hunt versus the clever, retentive, new-school Sam.
But we thought it only right to spend an afternoon seeing if we could jeep the Gene Genie going. Someone mentioned Miami Vice. And someone else mentioned Moonlighting. And then I confessed to having been a new romantic. And where were you during the Royal Wedding? And wouldn’t Gene Hunt just hate cocktails and yuppies and Lord Scarman and… Suffice to say, by the end of the afternoon we were as excited about Ashes to Ashes as we’d ever been about Life on Mars.
So we added a small scene in the last episode of Life on Mars, where Sam records all the details of his 70s coma experience onto a cassette and hands it to a buddy to send to Psych Evaluation Division, where ‘there’s this officer collecting stuff from colleagues who’ve suffered trauma’. In Ashes to Ashes, the tape is received by a police psychiatrist called Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes).
Alex is a brilliant, chaotic, careerist single mum who specialises in talking down armed hostage takers and in studying the suicide of officers in the Metropolitan Police. She’s particularly fascinated by the imaginings of the late Sam Tyler, because his stories of 70s Manchester and the monstrous Gene Hunt are so vivid and lifelike.
So after a terrible incident befalls her in 2008 she “wakes up” in a city and year – London, 1981 – that were pivotal to her childhood. But, even more alarmingly, she wakes up in a world populated by the characters from Sam’s ramblings! That means Gene – seconded to the Met and spoiling for a fight. The news that he’s to have a female DI does not bring a smile to his scowling face.
As soon as we had the idea that Gene’s new adversary was going to be a bird (I’m terribly sorry, I’ve spent far too much time in the company of Gene Hunt. I’ll have you know I moisturise and cry at Little House on the Prairie), we knew the texture of our new show was going to be very different from Life on Mars.
Alex Drake, as portrayed by the brilliant Keeley Hawes, is sexy, funny, provocative, and passionate. She has a terrible dilemma – somehow she has to survive this strange, exciting, disconcerting world of 1981 and find a way back to her daughter, Molly. A terrible event shattered her childhood in 1981 and Alex thinks that if she can somehow stop that happening, she just might find her way home. That’s the engine of her journey through this series. If Molly represents Alex’s yearning for life, then a particularly unpleasant clown, seemingly a refugee from David Bowie’s seminal video for Ashes to Ashes appears to represent death. He is her greatest foe. Nasty, insidious, evil. You’ll never go to the circus again.
Alex’s relationship with Gene is stormy, prickly, immense and compelling. Alex is obviously a long way from home. But Gene is also a fish out of water; missing Manchester, divorced, knowing that the Scarman report is on its way and that his way of policing will soon be a thing of the past. They sense the loneliness and longing in each other and a mutual attraction (that’s sometimes very close to mutual loathing!) simmers as the series progresses.
The look of Ashes to Ashes is very different from its predecessor too. Life on Mars was brown and grey, a world of drab pubs, ancient pickled eggs and warm bitter. Ashes to Ashes is red and yellow, a world of chrome wine bars and rah-rah skirts and cocktails called sex on the beach with plastic umbrellas in them.
And London 1981 is, of course, very different from Manchester in 1973. The more we researched the more important the year and the city seemed to become, a real ‘bingo’ year in British politics, policing and culture; the Royal Wedding, the Brixton riots, the Scarman report, new romantics, the rise and rise of Thatcherism, the first seeds of the Docklands development. The world was changing.
It’s not all politics, policing and devil-clowns, of course. We have the most cracking soundtrack, from Dexy’s Midnight Runners to Joy Division, there’s enough hairspray to take out an area of the rainforest the size of Wales; Zippy and George make a weird appearance; Shaw Taylor from Police 5 puts in an even weirder one; Rays perm sizzles, Chris wears eyeliner to the Blitz club; arses are bared, cocktails consumed and blaggers bashed.
So don’t be shy. Put on the mascara, backcomb your hair (and that’s just the boys), slip into something short and red and hope like hell Chris de Burgh doesn’t write a song about you. The Audi Quattro awaits, engine growling. Ashes to Ashes is on the car radio, Gene Hunt is behind the wheel. Come on. Let’s go for a ride. You know you want to.
I’m in the Blitz club, that joyous heartbeat of new romanticism, smeared mascara and pouts. It’s London. It’s s1981. Boy George just took my coat. Steve Strange – yes, the actual Steve Strange – is up on stage singing Fade to Grey to desperately cool peacock boys and girls. Bliss. Then someone shouts, ‘Cut!’, the house lights come up and I realise that I’m actually in a cushy working men’s club in Kilburn, north London. In the middle of the morning. In 2007. And a burly man is staring at me and telling me not to stand on the cable. For this is a film set and I am a screenwriter. In the words of Talking Heads’ David Byrne, how did I get here?
Life on Mars took place entirely inside the head of coma patient Sam Tyler (John Simm), so when he jumped off that Manchester roof at the very end of the series, it’s fair to say that we all thought the destination of our strange, wonderful journey had been reached But, hugely encouraged by the critical and popular response (and with time running out as we shot the last episode), the BBC asked us if there was any way we could do a spin off, so loath were they to say goodbye to Gene Hunt and his Merry Men. To which the answer was no. Life on Mars died with Sam Tyler. None of us wanted to create a feeble version of that show and it’s captivating central dynamic; the growling old school Gene Hunt versus the clever, retentive, new-school Sam.
But we thought it only right to spend an afternoon seeing if we could jeep the Gene Genie going. Someone mentioned Miami Vice. And someone else mentioned Moonlighting. And then I confessed to having been a new romantic. And where were you during the Royal Wedding? And wouldn’t Gene Hunt just hate cocktails and yuppies and Lord Scarman and… Suffice to say, by the end of the afternoon we were as excited about Ashes to Ashes as we’d ever been about Life on Mars.
So we added a small scene in the last episode of Life on Mars, where Sam records all the details of his 70s coma experience onto a cassette and hands it to a buddy to send to Psych Evaluation Division, where ‘there’s this officer collecting stuff from colleagues who’ve suffered trauma’. In Ashes to Ashes, the tape is received by a police psychiatrist called Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes).
Alex is a brilliant, chaotic, careerist single mum who specialises in talking down armed hostage takers and in studying the suicide of officers in the Metropolitan Police. She’s particularly fascinated by the imaginings of the late Sam Tyler, because his stories of 70s Manchester and the monstrous Gene Hunt are so vivid and lifelike.
So after a terrible incident befalls her in 2008 she “wakes up” in a city and year – London, 1981 – that were pivotal to her childhood. But, even more alarmingly, she wakes up in a world populated by the characters from Sam’s ramblings! That means Gene – seconded to the Met and spoiling for a fight. The news that he’s to have a female DI does not bring a smile to his scowling face.
As soon as we had the idea that Gene’s new adversary was going to be a bird (I’m terribly sorry, I’ve spent far too much time in the company of Gene Hunt. I’ll have you know I moisturise and cry at Little House on the Prairie), we knew the texture of our new show was going to be very different from Life on Mars.
Alex Drake, as portrayed by the brilliant Keeley Hawes, is sexy, funny, provocative, and passionate. She has a terrible dilemma – somehow she has to survive this strange, exciting, disconcerting world of 1981 and find a way back to her daughter, Molly. A terrible event shattered her childhood in 1981 and Alex thinks that if she can somehow stop that happening, she just might find her way home. That’s the engine of her journey through this series. If Molly represents Alex’s yearning for life, then a particularly unpleasant clown, seemingly a refugee from David Bowie’s seminal video for Ashes to Ashes appears to represent death. He is her greatest foe. Nasty, insidious, evil. You’ll never go to the circus again.
Alex’s relationship with Gene is stormy, prickly, immense and compelling. Alex is obviously a long way from home. But Gene is also a fish out of water; missing Manchester, divorced, knowing that the Scarman report is on its way and that his way of policing will soon be a thing of the past. They sense the loneliness and longing in each other and a mutual attraction (that’s sometimes very close to mutual loathing!) simmers as the series progresses.
The look of Ashes to Ashes is very different from its predecessor too. Life on Mars was brown and grey, a world of drab pubs, ancient pickled eggs and warm bitter. Ashes to Ashes is red and yellow, a world of chrome wine bars and rah-rah skirts and cocktails called sex on the beach with plastic umbrellas in them.
And London 1981 is, of course, very different from Manchester in 1973. The more we researched the more important the year and the city seemed to become, a real ‘bingo’ year in British politics, policing and culture; the Royal Wedding, the Brixton riots, the Scarman report, new romantics, the rise and rise of Thatcherism, the first seeds of the Docklands development. The world was changing.
It’s not all politics, policing and devil-clowns, of course. We have the most cracking soundtrack, from Dexy’s Midnight Runners to Joy Division, there’s enough hairspray to take out an area of the rainforest the size of Wales; Zippy and George make a weird appearance; Shaw Taylor from Police 5 puts in an even weirder one; Rays perm sizzles, Chris wears eyeliner to the Blitz club; arses are bared, cocktails consumed and blaggers bashed.
So don’t be shy. Put on the mascara, backcomb your hair (and that’s just the boys), slip into something short and red and hope like hell Chris de Burgh doesn’t write a song about you. The Audi Quattro awaits, engine growling. Ashes to Ashes is on the car radio, Gene Hunt is behind the wheel. Come on. Let’s go for a ride. You know you want to.
