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May 1st, 2010
08:35 am - Ashes to Ashes
The third season of Ashes to Ashes seems to be of pretty consistent high quality and joie de vivre. For better or worse, it's got more time-gimmicks than Life on Mars had - last week they vandalised the Blue Peter garden, and this week a policeman shot Ben Elton at the comedy store nightclub*. He was aiming for Bernard Manning.
As this milieu was where I lived in my early twenties I both feel a pleasant nostalgia and an almost irresistible urge to explain to you all how they have got it wrong, in each episode. 'It wasn't like that' and 'I was there' simultaneously. In the first series 'it wasn't like that' had the balance, this series not so much.
I was also wondering why they called Gene's rival entity 'Keats'. Surely, I was saying to myself, he should be Coleridge? Then it occurred to me: Samuel Tyler's Coleridge (badum-tish). I'm sure this coincidence of names is a retcon not a plan.
Do you think they'll bring Sam back for the last episode? I think so. meanwhile Gene told the fangirls off: 'You're obsessed woman!'
*Presumably changing the course of history. Comic history anyway.
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Argh, spoilers, can you put anything about this week's ep behind a cut? (I read something about 'Ben Elton' and then looked away as I haven't seen it yet).
Will be back to read when I've seen it! OK, have done. I don't think what I have said will spoil your enjoyment. Thanks. Sorry. I loved the Blue Peter thing so much last week because I love being surprised like that! Yes, thanks for reminding me Have now seen it and I'm with you in that I think Sam is coming back. I also have that same 'I was there/it wasn't like that' feeling (although I was only 14 in 1983, it's a very vivid period of my life). I'm behind with Ashes to Ashes, but hope to catch up soon (breastfeeding!). And I'd be thrilled by a blow by blow how they got it wrong. For me, LoM was interesting because I knew the TV it was riffing off, but had only ever been able to guess at what it was "really" like based on my memories of the British tv of the period, my memories of Australia of the period, and various documentaries and things I had seen since. 70s Britain -and 80s Britain - is no more real to me than a tv show, anyway, in other words.
So just in case you ever give into the urge, you'll have at least one keen reader :) I suppose you could argue that these shows transport their protagonists into the telly of the time not on the reality. However they include things - like the feminist movement, or porn - which weren't shown on telly in those days. The clothes aren't quite right I don't think. Most women were a lot more low-key than the women you see in the show: girls generally wore demure Princess Di haircuts in their eyes, and wide mid-calf skirts. Funnily enough I wore high-waist trousers and pink leather jackets and stuff like Alex does, but no makeup. The comedy club was more wild and wooly than the example in the show. The women's groups were more hardcore and assertive. |
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