Continuation of this excellent OTF thread for slowcoaches like me who have only just started watching Series 1 on digital replay, and for anyone who has anything to add. (I've stopped reading that thread at page 8 because I'm running into spoiler-danger.)

I totally understand the criticisms (of the smug modern-day cosiness, of the having-it-both-ways), but I can't help myself: I love this show, I'm getting seriously hooked into it, and I only wish I'd known who the hell John Simm was when I met him at the NME awards a couple of years ago and he told me he reads my column. (Maybe I need to throw myself in front of a car and revisit that night via a coma-dream.)

Philip Glenister totally steals the show as DCI Gene Hunt, doesn't he? He's a kind of hybrid of Don Revie and Terry Scott. And Liz White as the WPC is hellacute. I think it's the way her voice is high and low at the same time. It's weird: soft and feminine but with these deep undertones to it.

I love the whole premise of it, and I dearly want to go back to the Britain of 1973. And they've done a pretty good job of recreating it, I'd say. Crucially, they've acknowledged that 1973 didn't look like 1973 completely, just as 1981 didn't look like 1981 completely, and so on. There's always a lag, in any given year: people drive cars they've had for years, people don't keep up with the latest fashions, and so on. So, quite correctly, the Life On Mars people have depicted a Manchester that in many ways still looks like the 50s or early 60s.

One or two anachronisms I've noticed: the decor of the nightclub in which they nick the local crimelord is way too modern (I'd estimate late 80s/early 90s), and you keep seeing very modern-looking extractor fan casings on the exterior of terraced houses.

It's 2006, am I in a coma, mad or gone back in time?

Be fair, man. I've acknowledged I'm a television slowcoach in my first para. I'm never at home in the evenings so I tend to miss things when they're first broadcast. That's how I roll.

Only jokin, SR!

If you've also missed Ashes to Ashes, don't bother...it's dreadful.

Aye, so I hear. But I expect I'll give it a chance, all the same.

I LIKED Ashes To Ashes. At the very least, the soundtrack was brilliant.

True, true gerontophile. Nice to see the Pop Group integrated into the plot of a primetime BBC drama as well. I just thought the series was ruined by whatserface's performance.

If you want another opportunity to see John Simm at his best try the box-set dvd of 'The Lakes' from a few years ago.

We bought it a while back and loved it.

Jimmy McGovern writing and John Simm starring..can't go wrong.

I find John Simm a bit annoying, to be honest, for reasons I can't quite put into words.

I was given the box set of series 1 of Life On Mars last Xmas, and stopped watching it after about five episodes. The Wire has ruined almost all television for me.

I caught Life On Mars on DVD after a friend's recommendation (I'm a real slowcoach when it comes to TV myself). Must say I wasn't impressed. Glenister gives a terrific performance but I guess I'm just not a fan of John Simm. I've seen him in The Lakes and he was great but he seems to be one of these actors who's quite dependent on the material matching his instincts. I never really bought his performance as a man out of time. This was in part due to the shoddy quality of some of the scripts. I don't want to cite specific examples because of spoilers. Suffice to say some of the characterisation and the plot resolutions just turned me away. It wasn't a show without redeeming features - Glenister, the genuine sense of place, some admittedly outstanding episodes all contribute to it being at the very least watchable.

Tony C - aye, the first series of The Lakes is great. Second series was a mistake, I felt.

I dearly want to go back to the Britain of 1973

Good Lord! Why? The looming sense of failure was pervasive and very depressing.

As these things go the show was pretty authentic feeling. There's a few things that are wrong: Finishing statements with a question eg "We'll take him to the station. Yeah?" Is a later development. As usual, modern hair-conditioning products mean that styles are right but are glossier and less lank than they were at the time.

Tyler's imagining it all so the anachronisms are at least defensible, if not essential.

Forget Ashes to Ashes; even series two of Life on Mars was totally post-shark.

Series 2 of "Life On Mars" has its moments. Horse is right though, there's a definite fall-off. Some of the episodes are pure filler. And as I've said before, the ending was lousy in a million different ways, though some disagree.

I'll still stand up for LoM, though. Just searched for the old "Ashes To Ashes" thread, and still agree with what I said then (which I'm pasting here rather than linking to, as that thread is VERY spoilersome indeed, for "Life On Mars" more than A2A):

QUOTE:
Life On Mars was peppered with flaws, some very serious - but it was hugely enjoyable, despite the often-preposterous plots, the sometimes clunky dialogue, the odd cheap laugh and the unfortunate subtext of "PC gone mad" (in both senses), simply because there was an underlying seriousness which really worked. It was never too LOL THE SEVENTIES LOL (generally, I thought they did a pretty good job of replicating the drab flash of the real British Seventies, rather than camping it up, or just sticking someone in flares and a wig and saying "look! 1973!"), but the occasional silliness sugared what was really going on: a rather dark and surreal drama about identity and alienation.

That's still what I like the most about that series: themes of existential doubt in a prime-time BBC drama, and the past recreated to look like a memory and a dream and a hallucination, simultaneously.

But "Ashes To Ashes", man, it was pure shit. The only possible way you could like it was as camp farce. After the genuine darkness of (parts of) "Life On Mars", it looks even worse.

QUOTE:
And yeah, I'm looking forward to Black Tie White Noise, where Gene Hunt has a Global Hypercolor T-shirt and a yak haircut (despite the fact that he would now be about 64 years old), and Ray, in his purple hooded top with a fluorescent plastic tube round his neck, shouts "bangin'!" as the team shut down an illegal rave - while DCI Simon Criddle walks around shaking his head at this strange alien world, and the camera settles on a prominently-placed Pokemon while someone in the background sets up a satellite dish.

Tyler's imagining it all so the anachronisms are at least defensible, if not essential.

Oh yeah I know. Unless they totally screw the story's credibility — cf: Heartbeat — it's several steps beside the point to go hunting for them.

Having said that: Ashes to Ashes. You guys could answer this better than I. Were the off-the-shoulder sweaters Keeley Hawes wore throughout, an early-80s thing? Seems to me they should be later but I can't imagine the producers would have got something that obvious so wrong.

They got everything else wrong in "Ashes To Ashes", so...