studioAT When John Simms opted to leave 'Life on Mars' after two series the BBC were left in a pickle. They had a show with ratings on the rise and in Gene Hunt a character who the public seemed to be falling in love with.The answer was simple - lets do the exact same thing, only in the eighties but with a woman cop going back in time instead. Lets go really mad and have Hunt and his crew move down to London too, for no apparent reason.All this leads to a similar, if indeed clever, spin-off that follows the ground already well trodden by the show it was spun-off from. If anything Hunt is more cartoonish than ever, and the show is bigger and bolder because of this.Throw in some good music, and a decent performance from Keeley Hawes, and you've got a show that ran for three series. For me though it lacked the originality of 'Life on Mars' - probably because the premise wasn't original second time around.

Corky1984 And so it came to an end and all was revealed. Gene Genie holds the keys to heaven in some kind of police purgatory...or something like that!! Ashes was a brilliant follow-up series to Life on Mars, bringing back Gene Hunt, Chris and Raymondo, but this time down south with those southern nancies, instead of ooop north in Manchester. The gorgeous Alex Drake woke up in 1981 and ended up staying till '83, when the mystery was unraveled. The Quattro was the top star, though, in shiny red and oozing cool. The 80s soundtrack was stunning and evocative. I like everything about this series, from the numerous one-liners, 'get your knickers on love, you're nicked', to the enthralling time-travel/universe jumping confusion! Gene Hunt captured much of what made Regan so special in the Sweeney. Ashes to Ashes was the best thing the BBC has done since Life on Mars. Taken together, the two shows add up to 40 episodes of TV gold. Superb.

Audax67 On seeing series 1:Crude, puerile, facile, over-acted... was it done this way on purpose, and if so what are they making fun of - the poor wights that stay glued? John Sim reportedly thought "Life on Mars" was a stupid idea, this one is an even more stupid retread with lousy acting (or is it direction?) thrown in.The Audi coupé is about the best thing in it. Lovely cars, they were. For the rest of it, the criminals are obvious, the cops bumble about, the floozy who talks phunny (Alex Whatever) is ludicrous. The guy who popped her one at the beginning should have used a dumdum.Yet funnily enough, it's quite enjoyable in its lobotomized way...Several months later:Changed my rating from 2 to 7. Why? Someone else in the family bought series 2 and 3. The way they tied it off explains why everything is crude, puerile and over-acted. Cunning devils...

melwyn This is certainly an entertaining show, but not up to the standard of Life on Mars.The basic template and structure is here, with similar plot devices, etc (the clown instead of the testcard girl, and the vision of a key event from childhood, for example), but what is lacking is an emotional depth to the character of Alex who is almost flippant about her predicament, and the more cohesive links between the "present day" and 1981, such as the links between Alex in 1981 and what Alex in the present is enduring. With LoM we were strongly reminded on a regular basis of the link between Sam's present day physical self and his 1973 self. Apart from the odd vision of her daughter, Alex appears to have almost no connection at all.Furthermore, the occasional forced dialogue and "speechgiving" we saw in LoM is present in abundance here, along with a severe amount of cheese and an embarrassingly predictable attempt at "sexual tension".The result is something that, instead of coming across as a kind of sequel, comes across as a poor copy. Disappointed.