Warning: David Bowie Music May Cause Inadvertant Time Travel

I'd like to talk now about something that only myself and about five other Americans are actually interested in. A few weeks ago a new show called Ashes to Ashes premiered on the BBC, and I've been keeping up with it through the almighty power of the internet. The show is a spin off of a previous BBC show called Life on Mars, a show I enjoyed immensely once my eldritch rituals finally secured me all of the episodes (it was a tad hard to find).

For those not among the aforementioned five, but are, for some reason, still reading, Life on Mars was a British cop show involving a detective in 2006 named Sam Tyler who gets hit by a car (while listening to "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie) and wakes up in 1973. The main mystery of the show is that we don't know if he's actually in 1973, if he's in a coma in 2006 and just imagining it all, or if he's just off his rocker. The fact that he tends to hear voices and see creepy little girls everywhere doesn't help much. The show ran for two seasons, and involved Sam adapting to police work in the 70's while trying to figure out how to get home. It had a great soundtrack and an amusing cast of characters that kept things light even while the main character slowly went crazy. If you don't mind thick British accents, leather jackets and a healthy heaping of angst (and I'd be angsty too, if I was stuck in the 70's with no internet) I would recommend it.

Ashes to Ashes is, as mentioned, a spin off of Life on Mars, where a new character, Alex Drake, finds herself in a similar situation. There's more to it, but I'm trying to keep it vague for anyone who might be interested in LoM, as the premise for Ashes sort of spoils the ending of the previous show. There are two major differences to the situation, the first being that Alex finds herself in 1981, instead of 1973, and the second being that Alex is almost definitely not in a coma. She gets shot. In the forehead. And then wakes up in 1981. She seems to believe that she is currently stuck in the moment between life and death, and her actions while in 1981 will determine whether she ultimately lives or ultimately dies. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of people who lived after getting shot in the head, and I have a feeling that her adventures in 1981 are more geared towards tying up her life and moving on then actually fighting to live, but that's just my half-assed theory.

Although I've tried my best, it's hard not to judge this show in comparison to Life on Mars. The main character from that show did not return for Ashes, but several characters do, and it's definitely interesting to see how they have changed (or not changed) in the 8 years since the events in LoM. Despite the familiar faces, Ashes to Ashes has a very different feel than LoM. Part of that can be chalked up to the difference in decades, the 80's are just going to feel different than the 70's, and a lot of police procedures that were common in the 70's just aren't going to fly in the increasingly-PC world of 1981. This doesn't prevent various characters from bashing a cuffed man's head against the car or informally interrogating suspects through clever application of a pool table, but it's easy to see that the characters we're used to seeing as masters of their domains now have they're hands tied a bit.

The biggest difference, however, and what gives Ashes its unique feel, is the main character. Alex is a lot less angsty then Sam was, partially due to her unshakable belief that she knows what's going on. As a psychological profiler, she is a lot more analytical about her situation. She adamantly believes she is hallucinating and speaks about it freely to the other characters, talking out theories to her much-confused coworkers. However, believing herself to be the only real person in her situation has given her a somewhat annoying air of superiority. It's a personality trait she shares with Sam, yet here it seems much more pronounced. While Sam was kind of an asshole for most of his show, you sympathized with him since he was in such a confusing situation and he got put in his place quite often, usually by means of his superior officer's fists. Alex is harder to sympathize with, partially because she's not as lost as Sam was, or doesn't think she is, and partially because she doesn't get put in her place too often, mostly because her boss isn't going to hit a woman. I'm hoping she's not as right as she thinks she is about her situation, but based on what we already know, it seems the most likely explanation. I just think it would be great if something twisted her, and the audience's, expectations.

Although we in the audience think we know what's going on, there is still plenty of mystery that we share with the main character. Central to this mystery is that 1981 is the year Alex's parents died. Vague flashbacks show us they died in a car bomb, and Alex seems to believe that saving them might be the key to returning home. Her mother is well-known as a particularly vicious lawyer, and Alex and her mother have already butted heads several times throughout the show, mirroring the strained relationship they seemed to have had when Alex was a child. More interesting, to me, at least, is the mystery surrounding why Alex was shot. She was kidnapped at gunpoint by an old drug lord who, at first, seemed to want her alive, bringing her to an abandoned boat. On the way we hear him talking on the phone to someone about telling Alex what actually happened to her parents, and the whole deal sounds like blackmail of some kind. But not long after that, Alex's kidnapper shoots her in the head with seemingly no provocation.

My theory is that the kidnapper was speaking to Alex's godfather, who, based on Alex's flashbacks, may have had something to do with the death of her parents. However, this theory doesn't explain why her kidnapper gets so trigger-happy. Maybe he just wants to shut her up, she does get annoying sometimes.

Anyway, this rambling analysis has gone on long enough, especially since no I know is going to know what the hell I'm talking about. So far I'm enjoying the show, and I would recommend it, especially if you happen to live in Britain and can just watch it on TV. If you don't live in Britain, Ashes to Ashes airs on Thursdays, so is usually available on the internet by Thursday night, 8 or 9 pm, Eastern time. It will also probably be on BBC America eventually, once the season is over on the BBC.