Well, what did everyone else make of the first episode?
SOME SPOILERS:
Okay, I really wasn't sure what I was going to make of the new series; LIFE ON MARS was a brilliant show but ultimately self-contained and the prospect of a follow-up series really stank of being a cash-in. Knowing that the events of LIFE ON MARS were all but a figment of Sam Tyler's comatose mind didn't lend to the concept of a sequel featuring a new central character, IMHO...
So, ASHES TO ASHES begins with our new point of focus—DI Alex Drake (the gorgeous Keeley Hawes) doing the school run with her daughter when she's called to a hostage situation—which at only three minutes in, invites the audience to suspend its disbelief incredibly: not good—and within minutes is shot, left for dead and before you can hum the opening bars to a Bowie track, Drake awakes in 1981, dressed in an outfit that would do Cleopatra Jones proud. Within seconds, Drake finds herself becoming a hostage once again, though this time Gene Hunt and the boys are on hand to rescue her.
After being mistaken for a prostitute and affectionately named "Bolly Knickers" by hunt, it transpires that Scotland Yard had been expecting Drake and it isn't long before she's joining the boys on a mission to bring down London's biggest supplier of cocaine and heroin.
So, after a somewhat shaky start, ASHES TO ASHES settles into what we have come to expect from LIFE OIN MARS; a fish-out-of-water at odds with Gene Hunt and their new surroundings but the writers haven't been complacent. Rather than rehashing the premise of LIFE ON MARS, they've given an already post-modern concept a post-modern twist: Drake had been investigating Sam Tyler's case back in the present, so she understands the mechanics of her situation and is constantly trying to second-guess what's going to happen, rather than being completely bemused by the situation as Tyler had been. The benefit of hindsight is definitely the key factor of what is going to keep ASHES TO ASHES fresh. That and the fact it's set in the 80s...