Life on Mars Special: Ashes to Ashes

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Police psychologist Alex Drake has spent a great deal of time reviewing the case of Sam Tyler, wondering whether there was anything that could have been done to prevent his leap off the roof. Her investigation is sidelined, however, when she's shot and meets up with Gene Hunt in 1981.

Previous: The End of the Tunnel

There is confirmation here of Sam Tyler's (John Simm) supposed predicament, stating that he had committed suicide shortly after recovering from his coma, unable to cope with the delusions of 1973 that had been created in his mind. While Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) investigates report after report in an effort to understand what could have been done to prevent his fragile state of mind, she finds herself coming face to face with Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), supposedly a figment of Sam's imagination, and wonders if there might be something more to his situation than meets the eye.

A lot of information is given about Alex throughout this episode, and she's shown to be not only incredibly competent at her job, but her approach to her job, while equally as thorough as Sam's, is different in so many ways that her relation to her situation is vastly different from his, giving a familiarity for the premise while also becoming a completely stand-alone story. Where Sam was very interested in the physical clues of his work, Alex is focused mainly on the psychological aspects of those involved, evident at the top of the episode when she's revealed to be writing a book about Sam's experience in Life on Mars. It's only when the people she cares about, like her daughter Molly (Grace Vance), are in danger that she completely loses her cool, having remained perfectly calm in the face of danger before that moment, and though her professional side is often in control, evident in her awe at the "full sensory hallucination" of the world created in her mind, she still has moments where her emotions get the better of her. Alex takes many clues about her situation from what had happened to Sam, assuming that the ringing phone is a conduit as it was for him, picking it up and asking for information about her and her daughter, and she worries that in entering the police station she will be making her delusion all the more real, trapping her as Sam had become trapped within his mind. Much like Sam, Alex uses Chris (Marshall Lancaster) to bounce ideas off of in an effort to make her way back home, and while there are certainly similarities between how Chris interacts with both people, it's different enough here that it still seems fresh and interesting.

The first appearance of Gene, Ray (Dean Andrews) and Chris as they drive onto the scene is very well done, especially given Alex's recognition of the three of them. The swelling of the music is purposely over-dramatic, and it's very effective coupled with Alex's fainting spell. Gene is shown to have calmed down considerably since his time in Life on Mars, and he has become much more professional in demeanor, though his dynamic with Alex is very much like his dynamic with Sam in the beginning. Chris is also shown to have changed drastically since his original appearance, risking his life in an effort to save Shaz (Montserrat Lombard) and even shooting Markham (Adam James) in the foot at the slightest provocation, qualifying that "[he's] not nervous, [he's] just cautious." The changes made in these characters are very believable given the time that's passed, and it's a pleasure to see them updated for another series.

Shortly after being in a hostage situation, Alex sends her daughter home with a relative, stating that she has too much paperwork to do. This seems strange given that the two of them had just had a gun pointed at their heads, and it surely wouldn't be out of the question for her to have asked for a day off in order to console her traumatized child. The mood is very difficult to get a grip on in this sequence, as Molly is bawling one moment, dwelling on the fact that she and her mother were nearly murdered, and then happily running into the arms of her godfather the next.

Alex is in awe that Sam was seconds away from death in reality and managed to live for so much longer in this world, using this as proof that she could be stuck in 1981 for a number of years without any time having passed in the real world. The issue is that she should know that her subconscious is not bound to Sam's, and her mind could simply be making up a happy ending for him in order to provide her some sort of closure or solace. It seems like a sloppy way to convey an idea to the audience when the character that we've been introduced to thus far should be somewhat dismissive of information gleaned from the constructs in her mind.

It's great to see Glenister back in this role, and the mild alterations to his character's personality are very organically integrated here. Hawes manages to headline the episode very well, especially in the scene where Alex finds her desk, discovers her badge, and slips into defeat as she realizes that she stuck in the past just as Sam was; Glenister and Andrews provide roughly the same reaction, and everyone involved in the story does a great job.

Director Jonny Campbell opens the story with Molly speaking Sam's narration from the opening credits to Life on Mars, revealing that it's his word-for-word statement from the tape he had made Alex at the end of the last episode, stating very bluntly that he did, in fact, die. Alex getting shot is very abrupt and surprising, incredibly well done, and the fact that the shot lingers for a few seconds on that scene evokes the possibility that she'll be alright only to instead have her wake up in the past. Seeing her life flash before her eyes, beginning with the bullet and rewinding like a video cassette, is very effective for the situation, and the appearance of the Clown (Andrew Clover) is fairly unsettling. The fact that her idea board reveals that she's dead is interesting, as it immediately provides an answer to her situation with the only question left being what she's going to do with her remaining time.

Written by Matthew Graham, this series seems like much more of a mystery-themed thriller than Life on Mars, which was more of a thriller-themed mystery, mostly because Alex is already aware of her situation here while Sam had been going in blind. As Arthur Layton (Sean Harris) kidnaps Alex, he makes no effort to conceal that he knows all about her, about her parents, stating that he's going to show her "the truth of how they died," and later being revealed to be a fixture of the past that she's sent back to. Ray tells her that Sam had, in fact, come back to save them, and had lived for another seven years before being killed in a car crash in 1980, but Alex knows that he was, in fact, dead that entire time, making the later appearance of the Clown all the more important, as he tells her, in Molly's voice, that she should not fight to wake up because she's dying and it will hurt too much.

Alex's mission is a far more interesting case than Sam's, if only because she's already well aware of her exact situation. Not only is she promised with almost immediate death should she wake up, but she also has a great insight into the fictional world that surrounds her, and is less inclined to deal with what she believes are figments of Sam's imagination.