Ashes to Ashes....

Ashes to Ashes, Funk to funky
We know Major tom's a Junkie.......

This song has been going around my head for weeks now and I know why. It's the drama on BBC that's just finished it's first season.

Coming on the back of 'Life on Mars', which set is 1973, 'Ashes to Ashes' is based in 1981. Both shows are about police officers that are injured on duty and end up in a coma whch sends them back in time. The unusual link is that the other characters in the show are the same. (more or less) The real gem is that both shows introduce us to Gene Hunt, the straight talking, sexist, macho brother of Jack Regan. Every profane comment that comes out of his mouth is pure gold.

If I had to make a choice over which series I prefer I think i'd go with 'Ashes', just because the vibe is more upbeat and the music is much better. 'Life on Mars', reminds me too much of the 70's and how grim it was. The feeling is captured perfectly. I can almost taste the Homepride white bread and smell the dog pooh. I get reminders of walking to school with holes in my shoes and watching Big Daddy wrestling on a Saturday afternoon. Which doesn't sound all that bad I guess, but the memory seems to be set in a dirtier and greyer time in my head.

The 80's weren't perfect by any means, but choosing 1981 for 'Ashes' was a good move. It was the start of changes in peoples lives. A little less hand to mouth for many. Music was powerful and a lot of new sounds were being born out of punk. In fact i think this may have been my personal experience rather everyone else's life too. I just wish I had been that bit older in 1981, so that I could have immersed myself into the sounds of the time. I was only 10 or 11 years, which was too young to truly appreciate the innovation and rawness of music at that time. When I was shopping for music everything had gone drastically downhill. Stock, Aitken and Waterman were playing with our minds and our tastes. I think it was this that drove me to listening to old time Motown, Soul and Blues, which is as far as I could get away from the bland blended benign commercial muck of the later 80's. ( my music influences, thats for another post I think)

So i've come to a conclusion that yes I prefer Ashes, but thats more to do with my association with the time than the show itself. These shows are the most original TV drama's to grace our screens for a very long time, and because of this the producers will flog it to death until we are sick of it. I wish we had the same originality with comedy, which in my mind had its greatest decade in the 70's. I can replay some of the scenes from Christmas specials over and over in my mind without getting bored of them. (Four Candles) That my friends is a story for another time....