Following Philip Glenister’s remarks  during the production of series two last year – “I think the thing about Gene is you are restricted in terms of what you do with him – people want to see him for what he is, and although that’s fun to play I need new challenges now, I want to move on.” – it’s always been clear Gene Hunt’s days were numbered. And the Kudos are making a virtue of this. Here’s the press release, issued this morning.

London, September 2009: It’s time to get your shoulder pads out of storage, start crimping your hair and get into the 80s mood for the very last time.  The award-winning BBC One drama, Ashes to Ashes, is back as filming begins on the eagerly awaited final series.

The highly-anticipated finale sees Philip Glenister and Keeley Hawes reprise their roles as that most un-PC of policeman, DCI Gene Hunt and his sassy partner DI Alex Drake, along with Dean Andrews as DI Ray Carling, Marshall Lancaster as DC Chris Skelton and Montserrat Lombard as WPC Sharon ‘Shaz’ Granger.  As well as the much loved regular faces, Daniel Mays (The Street, Plus One) will also appear in the series as Discipline and Complaints officer, Jim Keats, adding an exciting twist to the team dynamic.

With last series’ cliff-hanger leaving audiences with the frightening image of Alex lying shot on a hospital gurney, the questions on everyone’s lips are “will Alex survive?”  And “how will her colleague and accidental assassin Gene Hunt dig himself out of that hole?”

The smash hit drama, made by Kudos Film and Television in association with Monastic Productions, finally unravels many of the mysteries from the previous two series of Ashes to Ashes, as well as those first experienced by the initial time-travelling copper, Sam Tyler, in the groundbreaking BBC One series Life on Mars some four years ago.  Will Alex finally discover why she’s been sent back to the 80s? Does anything tie Alex and Sam Tyler together?  And who exactly is Gene Hunt…?

Jane Featherstone, Executive Producer, Kudos Film and Television says: “Everyone has their own theory about who Gene Hunt is and why Alex Drake, and Sam Tyler ended up in his world. Alex’s journey is nearing its end and Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah have planned a fabulous finale.  We’re now at the point where we can finally reveal some of the answers and we can’t wait to hear what the fans think about it all.”

Ashley Pharoah, co-creator, writer and Executive Producer for Monastic Productions adds: “Gene Hunt has delighted fans for almost five years.  Matthew and I have loved writing the adventures of Gene, Alex and the rest of the team and will be really sad to finally have to say goodbye to characters that have become a great part of our lives.”

Piers Wenger, Head of Drama, BBC Wales also says: “Series three of Ashes to Ashes will have the same combination of thrilling crime drama, outrageous 80s outfits and cutting one liners. We’ll be sad to see Gene and the gang go but the journey that will take us to that finale will be one of the most exciting, compelling and edge-of-your seat rides on TV!”

Ashes to Ashes is written and created by Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, two creators of the award-winning Life on Mars.  It is produced by Kudos Film and Television, in association with Monastic Productions and was commissioned by Jay Hunt, Controller, BBC One and Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning.

Executive producer duties will be split between Jane Featherstone, Simon Crawford Collins and Alison Jackson for Kudos Film and Television, Ashley Pharoah for Monastic Productions and Piers Wenger for the BBC.  The producer is Howard Burch.

The press release comes out today, as the drama’s second series reaches its climax on BBC1. Here’s what it says…

June 8 2009: Don’t put the leg warmers and blue eyeliner away just yet because the 80s revival is set to continue in the gripping finale of Ashes to Ashes, to be screened on BBC One next year.

The hit drama from Kudos Film and Television in association with Monastic Productions has been recommissioned for a third series by the BBC following a fantastic second run which has kept millions of viewers hooked each week.

Fans have theorised since Life on Mars and throughout Ashes to Ashes about who Gene Hunt actually is and what his alternative world really means. Producers have now revealed the climax of series three will finally reveal all and writers and creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah have promised a stunning finale for fans.

Pharoah says: “We have thoroughly enjoyed following Alex Drake on her journey in the 80s and seeing her fiery relationship with Gene Hunt develop. We are also as excited as the viewers to see how her journey ends and we promise the third series will be packed full of intriguing twists and turns to keep viewers guessing about the final outcome.”

Simon Crawford Collins, Executive Producer Kudos Film and Television, says: “Will Alex make it back home, why is she living in this parallel 80s world, what will become of bullish Gene Hunt and will we ever discover what actually happened to Sam Tyler…..viewers will not be left disappointed because the series promises to finish with a bang!”

Ashes to Ashes is written and created by Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, two creators of the award winning Life on Mars. It is produced by Kudos Film and Television, in association with Monastic Productions and was commissioned by Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning.

Executive producer duties will be split between Jane Featherstone, Simon Crawford Collins and Alison Jackson for Kudos Film and Television, Ashley Pharoah for Monastic Productions and Piers Wenger for the BBC.

Filming on series three will begin in the Autumn and Ashes to Ashes will return to BBC One in 2010.

To me, I thought it was all very explicit – Sam woke up from his coma (he must have actually been awake as the series’ creators needed him to document his experiences so that the upcoming lead character in Ashes to Ashes can read them before she too plunges into a coma). Upon realising that his “life” in 1973 was far more vivid and enjoyable than his real life, he decided to try and return to “1973″ by jumping off the top of the police station. 

The bit with the test card girl switching our telly off at the end was just a bit of extra fun, that didn’t really have any bearing on the denouement as a whole.

Now is this correct, or is there anyone out there who thinks something different happened? And more importantly was this a good finale for Sam?

With Life on Mars falling off our screens for good, I suppose we’ll never find out why a comatose Sam bothered imagining a grain of sand on Annie’s hand. In fact for many viewers the series’ conclusion probably leads dozens of questions unanswered (and none more important for some than whether or not the occasional historical inaccuracy was intentional or not). What cannot be in any doubt though, was that the finale was definitely the right one – at least on an emotional level.

Lead writer and co-creator Matthew Graham has admitted that he didn’t expect there to be any debate over whether or not Sam was in a coma, presuming that the early episodes made the situation clear enough. This then explains why the eventual conclusion offered little in the way of deviation from the most commonly accepted theory. The episode’s midpoint did try and throw viewers off track, but this just underlined the fact that the truth was exactly what we’d come to suspect (you knew there had to be some kind of curveball just before the end didn’t you?).

With various theories floating around since the conclusion of series one, you have to admire the programme makers’ tenacity in sticking with their original idea, even after a number of ingenious alternative notions (it’s all going on in Gene’s head, not Sam’s) were offered to them on a plate. Clearly there was no way that our lead couldn’t have come from 2006, given his knowledge of Thatcher, Red Rum, iPods and all those other post-1973 things and the notion of time travel just wouldn’t have sat well with a series that was so resolutely down to Earth. So a coma it had to be then.

If you do still wish to grumble at what we got, or pick the bones over the series’ internal logic then that’s because you’ve failed to understand what Life on Mars was actually about. Clearly there were some questions that could be asked as to why Sam’s betrayed colleagues were so quick to welcome him back into the fold, but in the end the details (like the historical accuracy) didn’t really matter. What was important was that Life on Mars remained true to its emotional core (besides the lack of animosity directed towards Sam on his return to 1973 can be explained away as a representation of his decision to embrace, rather than try and escape from his self-constructed inner world).

So, despite Sam’s disillusionment with the real world being conveyed in an unconvincing and almost arbitrary manner, this was the right ending. Shot through with tragedy and humour and providing a kind of transcendence that the similarly emotionally charged first series never managed to attain. Looking at the two runs as a whole though, one is struck by the juxtaposition of the wonderfully crafted ongoing coma storyline, versus what were very often pretty run-of-the-mill police dramas. In the second series in particular, the investigations were mundane, with many of the baddies revealed as just the bloke who appeared earlier in the episode in a scene seemingly unrelated to the investigation itself. Similarly the relationships of the five principle characters stalled, with the beginning of each episode resetting Annie, Gene and the rest back to their default mode, regardless of the lessons learned the previous week.

Life on Mars excelled because the ’70s setting and drip-feed of Sam’s back-story were enough to punctuate the routine stuff going on in the foreground. Given Ashes to Ashes will be stripped of the wonderful sense of mystery that underpinned this series, it’s difficult to see exactly how it’s going to work. There is talk that Gene has further secrets to reveal, but a move towards a more metaphysical, rather than psychological central premise sounds fraught with difficulty.

But these are concerns for another time (1981 to be precise). The finale of Life on Mars left this reviewer agitated and a little despondent for a good while after the credits rolled. Not because it wasn’t the perfect ending, but rather because in the showing of the final distillation of Sam’s internal emotional struggle, the show revealed itself to be a far greater series than perhaps individual episodes suggested. More troubling, though, was the realisation that Sam Tyler had grown into a wonderful television character and his passing is to be mourned those of us stuck here in the future.

What does this all mean? Did they have telephones in San Francisco in 1903? What’s going on here? Is it just a coincidence?

As you can probably guess, I am loving trying to crack this mystery.

I’d forgotten quite how much I love this show, and with everything being wrapped up this year, already there’s a palpable sense of progression. Don’t read on if you object to mild spoilers and theorising …

MILD SPOILERS AND THEORISING …
From episode one, Sam’s relationship with the 21st century changes, as he receives a telephone call from the future, which he can interact with. In short, the person on the other end of the line can hear him. They also leave trace of a phone number – Hyde 2612 – and there’s talk of pulling Sam out once his mission is complete.

Hyde 2612? Mission? Could Sam actually be from the year 2612, was seconded to 2006 for a job of work, and then back to 1973 for another gig? And he’s just forgotten?

Anything that gets me speculating like this is must-viewing…

Ordinary Joe is about: “life and the ramifications of decisions you make and what determines your destiny. It follows one man’s life in four different ways but each narrative takes place in the same timescale. It will use the same cast to tell the different stories. It explores to what extent you can shape your own future.”

Bizarrely this isn’t a completely new idea – it sounds very similar to range of films including Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance (1987), Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998) and the underrated 11:14 (2003) – oh and all right Sliding Doors (1998). But the genius of Kudos’ other work has been distilling a range of influences to create something that still feels fresh and new.

The real story here is probably that ITV1 are going out on a limb and actually commissioning something with such an experimental concept. It’s not clear from the description the extent to which the fantasy elements will lead the story, but the channel’s recent flirtations with genre have been mixed. The Eleventh Hour with Patrick Stewart and Ashley Jenson was dulled by bizarre directorial choices, imagery and a publicity campaign that tried to describe the series as speculative drama rather than science fiction (oh really, and the difference is?). After Life with Lesley Sharp and Andrew Lincoln is better and currently enjoying a second series.

The real trick for Ordinary Joe will be selecting the correct time slot – let’s just hope they don’t do something silly, like play it opposite Life On Mars as a spoiler…

It’ll also be a challenge to maintain the sheer momentum and dramatic elan of the first episode. If the show settles into conventional casebook-style business, the “time travel” elements will surely begin to feel like bolted-on extras, somewhat superfluous to the main storyline and crowbarred into the plot. On the other hand if it continues to major on the fish-out-of-water theme, where can it go other than into increasingly cliched 1970s culture shocks? There are another seven hours to come; seven hours to explore a conceit already done and dusted in less than one.

If the series concentrates on how and why John Simm is imagining himself into 1973 and the potential for him starting to lose further grip on reality – with other “bits” of today popping up in yesteryear – it might pull off the trick of being the best crime drama since Between the Lines. Besides providing for a perfect way to pass the weeks until another time-traveller returns.

In the opening few minutes we are presented with your typical cop-by-numbers by director Bharat Nalluri, luring the viewer into a false sense of what the show is likely to be.

The trailers that ran for a few weeks prior to the broadcast of episode one didn’t seem very enticing, but after seeing the opener it is immediately apparent this could prove to be a very good show indeed. The story begins squarely in the here and now with detective Sam Tyler (John Simm) pursuing a crook who is suspected of being a serial killer. All of the equipment and ephemera of modern policing is clearly on show, computers, mobile phones, psychiatrists and the like – things Sam is soon going to miss. Another icon of the noughties shows up in his jeep, where we see Bowie’s Life on Mars playing on his iPod. Soon after this he is knocked over in a shocking, split-second accident. Quite how he could have survived it is difficult to know, and questions about this are raised later in the story.

When Sam comes round, Life on Mars is now playing on an old car radio cassette player, and he quickly finds himself in a new job …

The 1973 he finds himself in – only 10 minutes into the show – is excellently recreated with a great deal of attention paid to even the smallest details. Beer bottles look authentic, wallpaper is suitably garish, clothes are very brown and there are dozens of cars from the era. The 1970s are now well and truly considered period and the team must have gone to great lengths to source all the things they needed to bring it to life.

Inevitably, chart hits from the time are present in the soundtrack, and it is hoped rights issues do not preclude their inclusion in any future DVD release. It isn’t just the landscape that seems alien to Sam, though, the people he encounters are of a very different stock. Instantly accepted into the police force which he has supposedly been transferred to, he encounters his new boss, DCI Gene Hunt. Hunt is a copper cut from the Regan cloth and clashes almost immediately with his new DI – brash, gruff and not averse to using his fists. Quite if this brand a copper was once as widespread as the telly would have us believe is open to question, but Philip Glenister does a good job of bringing the stereotype to life.

One thing the programme highlights very clearly is just how much policing has changed in Britain over the past three decades. Sam encounters very different attitudes and procedures in 1973, with men very clearly in charge. Processes are slap-dash, and the coppers often see things as little more than a joke, even in the most serious of cases. Much of the language people speak is alien (as is Sam’s to them, “PC Terminal” is assumed to be a person by a ’70s colleague) and technical procedures drag on for much longer than our hero is used to (tests take a fortnight to come back from the lab). Despite this, the show indicates the methods used by Hunt and his team, can work. He gets results, despite the dubious way he conducts his investigations. He has little respect for the correct, official way of doing things and is as prepared to beat-up a suspect as he is to take down a statement.

It’s a high-intensity role for Simm, who appears in every scene. Thankfully, he does a fine job as a man out of his time. He does, however, appear to be a little too young to be a DCI in 2006, never mind a DI in 1973. Most of the supporting characters are thinly-sketched so far, but one or two of them look as if they’ll have more important roles to play in the future. There is more to Nelson the barman than he lets on to everybody but Sam, and the character of Neil is something of a mystery as yet – he knows things about the future nobody but Sam could.

There’s plenty of mystery here to keep the viewers tuning in next time. Is Sam in a coma in hospital as Neil suggests, or is he in fact already dead? Why do the people in the television set speak to him? Questions, questions. But there is one thing we can be sure of: what initially looked as though it was going to be a God awful small affair – yet another unimaginative crime drama – is already proving itself to be of far more fascinating stock.