ASHES TO ASHES 3.5

WRITERS: Tom Butterworth & Chris Hurford
DIRECTOR: Jamie Payne
GUEST CAST: Lee Ross, Nicholas Gleaves, Roy Hudd, Camille Coduri, Robert Wilfort, Joseph Long, Jack James & Geff Francis

[SPOILERS] This episode tested my patience with its weak investigation storyline and, despite some layering to the wider mystery of what happened to Sam Tyler, I find myself caring less and less. I just can't shake the feeling Ashes To Ashes is about to take a big dump all over Life On Mars' divisive but resonant finale. I hope the writers' explanation is strong enough to make series 3 look much stronger in retrospect, but we'll just have to wait and see.

This week, Gene's (Philip Glenister) rival from his Manchester days arrived in London, a cocky DCI by the name of Litton (Lee Ross, overacting) who was meant to be a brasher dinosaur than Gene but came across as just an oily caricature with a jutting jaw and comedy moustache. Litton's down south trying to locate end-of-the-pier comedian Frank Hardwick (Roy Hudd), who stole money from a police pension fund. Oh yes, big stakes.

To cut a long a tiresome story short, the presence of Litton and his right-hand man DI Bevan (Nicholas Gleaves) made their equivalents Gene and Ray (Dean Andrews) feel like they've gone soft since leaving Manchester, and there was clear antagonism between Litton and Gene that Keats (Daniel Mays) exploited by cooperating with Litton's investigation just to annoy Hunt. Alex (Keeley Hawes) felt the blunt force of Litton's misogyny, but also came to suspect that Bevan was instrumental in covering up what really happened to Sam Tyler three years ago, acting on behalf of Gene.

The focal storyline with Hardwick was so thin and prosaic that it was a struggle to stay engaged with, especially with Ross and Gleaves giving broad performances that reminded me how daft and pantomime Ashes To Ashes can feel at its worst. This was exacerbated by the fact a backdrop to the whole episode was a very unconvincing charity event, which saw Chris (Marshall Lancaster) body-popping, an uninspired Blue Brothers routine, and a duet for Ray and Shaz (Montserrat Lombard) singing "Danny Boy". All moments best scrubbed from your memory.

Whenever's there's such a tepid storyline, I usually rely on the clues to the overarching mystery to conciliate my disappointment. Here, Gene burned Sam's leather jacket and case-files in a steel drum, Ray saw the same panorama of stars that Shaz and Alex have witnessed recently, and it became clear that Bevan did know something incriminating about what Gene did (or didn't do) that resulted in Sam's death -- so much so that Gene was forced to shoot him dead. A few things to chew on there, certainly, but was it worth the effort? The show will be over with in three weeks, and there's never enough firm evidence to construct fresh theories from. I've had three pet theories in play since series 1 about how Ashes To Ashes can end, and the show has done very little to dissuade me from them.

Overall, I just found this very weak. I appear to be in the minority for disliking series 3 (amongst the online community), but many of my friends are likewise finding Ashes To Ashes difficult to care about now. I hope there's a stunning finale planned, because the show deserves to end on a high -- especially as the creators risk defacing Life On Mars by binding the two shows together for its third act.

Asides

• I'm going to pray that Ray's line about "astronauts" after seeing stars isn't of deeper relevance, and was perhaps just a dig at the atrocious ending of ABC's Life On Mars remake (where the characters were revealed to be futuristic astronauts travelling to the Red Planet on a "gene hunt", ho-ho.)
• Ray's "Danny Boy" performance was perhaps something of an in-joke, as actor Dean Andrews is actually a very good singer.
• I've enjoyed seeing how paperwork and procedures (the bane of Gene's way of life) are slowly creeping into the police system this series. It was fun to see a tape-recorder being used in an interview room to prevent police brutality, which Gene inevitably poured tea over.
• They shot Ben Elton! That has to be one of the strangest moments in Ashes To Ashes history, having an actor play a well-known '80s comedian and have him shot. I guess Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford didn't like Blackadder or The Young Ones.
• I'm sure Montserrat Lombard's a lovely, sweet person in real life... but the character of Shaz and her insipid voice really makes my eyes roll. She's awful on this show.

30 APRIL 2010: BBC1/HD, 9PM