Ashes to Ashes

[major_clanger]

Oh, wasn't that fun! There's no doubt at all the writers knew just how far they could push it without becoming self parody - and then nudged it just that little bit further. I was creased up half a dozen times in sheer delight. It's not Life on Mars, but it's the postmodern self-referential recursive bastard offshoot of it and that's just as good for me.


Gene Hunt has a Commodore Pet! I'd actually guessed that one of the characters would have a computer, but I was expecting it to be Chris with a ZX81... And the end titles were a nice touch.

The SFX shot of a pre-Dome Greenwich was also good. I was having fun trying to work out where some of the location shots were; I think that the disused factory south of the Excel Centre might have been standing in for 1980s Shadwell.

A double reference to The A-Team - not only what Gene dubs his squad, but also the whole hail-of-machine-gun-fire-that-slightly-wounds-the-baddy trope :-)

So, Sam Tyler is missing presumed dead, but no body was ever found. Which plot development is more inevitable: Gene getting together with Alex, or Sam turning up?

Comments

[non-trivial.livejournal.com]

I thought it was rather good fun, but the initial setup was a bit ludicrous - sending in a negotiator without a flak jacket? Not shooting the nutter who had just grabbed a child when he moved his weapon away from the hostage? Or maybe that was some bizarre alternate-world Met as well...

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Gene's PET wouldn't've had a hard disc in '81. And they wouldn't've called it a "hard disc" back then. It was a bloody WINCHESTER!

Otherwise - Marvellous!

Sam and Alex, I reckon, in the last episode. ;)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Point! I got the hard disk problem but of course it would've been a Winchester! Or 8" floppies...

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I liked the poster of the tennis player scratching her bum, on the inside of the coffee cupboard. And where did they get that can of TAB?

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

And the red/black/grey stripy stuff? Oh yes. I still had a red/black/grey/white diagonal striped duvet cover until I bought my first double bed ;P

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I think I had the same one. Coz Duvets were Chic and Cool. I thought of it when I saw Gene's tie.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Littlewood's, I'll bet ;P

And yes, I think I got my first duvet continental quilt, let's get the language right, and had my first pizza circa 1981 ;)

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

We used to make pizza at home in the 70s, with regular bread dough and pink Danish salami. It was gross.

By 1981 I had a food processor and was busy with homemade hummous. And I'd started going to a wine bar instead of a pub. There were tables made out of old sewing machines.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

It's 2008. I have never deliberately set foot in a wine bar, and don't intend to.

Mind you I come from the kind of place where garlic bread "GARLIC? BREAD?" was exotic.

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Brentford Nylons

(no, I don't know if they sold non nylon bedroom products)

FF

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I have a horrible feeling you may be right.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

That or Tesco Home and Wear.

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I laughed through half of it. It helped that I was alive in the 80s so got more of the pop culture references than I did with LoM.

I'm not sure the Pet makes sense. Wouldn't they have had a dumb terminal to a mainframe instead? Also, it appeared to be running MSDOS...

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

It seemed to be running MadeUpOS, as computers on telly and in films often did. And back then it probably would've been a dumb terminal to the PNC, yes, which some desk sergeant would've worked for Gene.