So Ashes To Ashes/Life on Mars ended last night after five series of what proved to be some of the most enjoyable British television of the past decade – well, ever, in fact.Turns out Gene Hunt’s world is a purgatory for dead police officers: “Somewhere where we go to sort ourselves. Coppers.” Alex Drake finally visits the farm in the photo that keeps cropping up, only to discover a shallow grave in which lies the body, not of Sam Tyler, as earlier episodes had suggested, but that of the young policeman she’s been seeing visions of throughout the series.
Gene Hunt has followed her to the farm. When he realizes the identity of the body, he is temporarily shattered. Staring at the young copper’s passbook, he mutters: “skinny lad who needs fattening up”.
He begins to tell the story – a story he had gradually forgotten since Coronation Day, 1976. The rookie policeman was on his first week on the beat when his mentor got drunk and left him on his own.
HUNT: Someone broke in here. He heard ‘em. Thought they
were kids, so he kicks the door open like he was John
Wayne or Jimmy Stewart. Bam! and he goes… See in here
- in here he’s not some snotty kid in uniform. He’s Gary
Cooper in High Noon. He’s The Law. Only, these weren’t kids.
DRAKE: Some man with a shotgun
HUNT: Didn’t deserve a shallow grave did he? Did he, Alex?
DRAKE: No, no. (Pause). You didn’t.
Finally, with that last line, the mystery is revealed. Gene Hunt died as a young man during his first week on the job. Now, he is what he aspired to be back then – big, tough, swaggering, respected, protective of those around him: the Gene Genie.
Meanwhile, the three other members of Hunt’s squad are discovering the truth about themselves by watching videotapes of their last moments, provided by Jim Keats, the senior officer who’s been gunning for Hunt. Ray hanged himself after killing a young man. Chris was shot to death by blaggers as a result of following his boss’s orders, Shaz was stabbed with a screwdriver trying to arrest a car thief. As the truth dawns on them, Keats convinces them to desert Hunt and follow him to glamorous new jobs in another division.
But there’s one last blag to foil, and, at Drake’s urging, Hunt radios his old team and – at the very moment when Keats is waiting for a lift to arrive to take the three coppers down (to hell) - asks his proteges to help beat the bad guys.
Next, we see Shaz, undercover, acting as a courier for stolen diamonds, having to be rescued from Dutch gangsters at an airfield. She gets away from them, but the gang destroys Hunt’s red Quattro in a Bonnie & Clyde storm of bullets, before roaring off in their get-away car – only for Ray and Chris to blindside them.
The team decide to celebrate, inevitably, by visiting a pub, The Railway Arms, run by Nelson, the bar-owner from Life on Mars. As the main entrance door opens, an unearthly glow pours forth.
Ray, Chris and Shaz have found redemption. Shaz has finally been promoted to Detective Constable, Ray has proved himself by bossing a successful operation, and Chris has overcome his issues with loyalty by supporting his boss. Just before they enter the pub (it’s heaven, by the way) Shaz declares her love for Chris.
Alex, who has realized that she is dead and will never see her daughter again (unkindly christened “Melanoma” in our house, on account of the extremely large mole on her cheek) begs to be allowed to stay with Gene Hunt in this, his world, to help him guide lost souls. But he persuades her to enter the pub with the rest of the team. They kiss. (Ahh!)
And that’s a mere fraction of what was going on.
So, why did it all work so effectively?
The acting helped – they were uniformly (geddit?) excellent. The main worry now must be what they do next. Will we ever accept any of them in other roles?
The writing (with occasional lapses over the 40 hours) was terrific – and often very funny. Examples from a five minute wedge of last night’s episode prove the point:
RAY: That new skip really creeps me out – he doesn’t even get horny
over a sawn-off!
CHRIS: This whole place feels different and we all know it. I thought it was
because I’d switched to Denim For Men, but it’s something more.
HUNT: Someone tell Drake to get her bony pointless arse into my office
ASA-bloody-P.
And this exchange:
DRAKE: These pieces of quartz were placed in their mouths to make an
ironic point.
HUNT: You’d better get on the blower to the Ironic Crimes Division
Squad then, ‘adn’t you?
And this one:
DRAKE: You know, you’re the most immature man I’ve ever met
HUNT: Bet I’m not
DRAKE: You are!
HUNT: Not!
And yet another:
RAY: You are - and always will be – The Guv.
HUNT: In danger of getting poofy, Raymundo.
Not only were the scripts funny, but – apart from some ill-judged lapses into sensitive, liberal, anti-Thatcher finger-wagging – it was a genuine relief to hear lines that would be blue-pencilled in a contemporary drama as misogynistic, racist or homophobic. In some ways, it was like being told that smoking isn’t really that bad for you. Gene Hunt was a marvelous, liberating antidote to the army of prim, purse-lipped, self-righteous cultural gauleiters of Labour’s infantilizing nanny state who’d taken it upon themselves to smack our botties when we didn’t think, feel or say the right thing. What wouldn’t the nation have given to see Gene Hunt knee the bossy little bastards in their collective groin (or, come to think of it, simply slap Harriet Harman).
And, of course, it was deeply nostalgic: for an era when the police were on our side, when we were all allowed – nay, positively encouraged – to conform to our gender stereotypes, when telling right from wrong wasn’t that difficult, and when grown-ups were in charge. As Alex Drake put it last night: “You're the most difficult, stubborn, obnoxious, misogynistic and reckless human being I've ever met. And yet somehow you make us all feel safe.”
To underline the point, the programme ended with a black and white clip from Dixon of Dock Green: “See you next week. Tata!”
Of course, the central irony of the whole Life On Mars/Ashes to Ashes saga turned out to be that Gene Hunt was an eighteen year old male’s concept of what an adult should be. Still, it’s one I suspect many of us would happily concur with.
Before George Dixon put in an appearance, we saw Gene Hunt in his office, glugging back the Scotch. When he hears a new arrival angrily demand to know where his iPod and his office are, Hunt gets up, opens his office door and growls: “A word in your shell-like, pal!”
Goodbye, Guv.
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