"it's a mystery which has been solved"

I get the feeling it hasn't and that the "it was only a coma all along" explanation was a big old red herring.

I should elaborate.

The ending of series one determined that Sam was definitely in a coma but I think the audience were hoodwinked into thinking that everything we saw from 1973 was therefore merely a figment of Sam's imagination. There were clues going against this; in fact the best is in episode one where Anne stops Sam jumping and has sand on her hand because she bumped into the fire bucket on the way which leads to Sam's puzzlement as to why his subconcious would bother with such details. Whether Sam's actions in 1973 to fully-imprison the creepy bloke actually made a difference in the future was also left a bit ambiguous. But for me one of the main things is Sam's "suicide" at the end of series two. If Sam was convinced that it was all a dream from being in a coma then why jump? Sam planned to jump at the end of episode one series one in order to get back to the "real" world; that makes sense in order to escape a coma but kill yourself in order to get back to something you know is a fantasy? Why would dying do what a coma did? Did Sam realise something else after he filed his report?

ATA seems to be playing with the same ideas. Alex Drake has the same idea that the viewers do: it's all just her imagination but the writers are likely to want to surprise both her and us rather than simply retrace footsteps.

Non. Sense.

Did the show end up surprising us before? Nope. Will it this time? Pah! Were all those details people agonised over online actually important? Not even remotely.

Michael, good review. Identifies a lot of what's making me take to AtA a lot more than I expected to.

> Now that we're aware Gene Hunt and his pals exist only in the minds of the protagonist, there's very little point tethering them to a consistent and believable reality.

Yes.

>Did the show end up surprising us before? Nope. Will it this time? Pah! Were all those details people agonised over online actually important? Not even remotely.

LOM wasn't the end, though. That was my point. There's still some story to be told otherwise what's the point of the bloke from 2008 being angry with her over something that happened in 1981, what's the point of the clown? Part of what kept people watching LOM was the fact that the programme kept feeding them a mystery. If that was all solved at the end of LOM then what's the point of doing all this "mystery clown" stuff since we "know" what it's all about?

Something else people have noted is that whilst LOM focused on Sam in order to keep the "is it real or is it him?" mystery going, ATA has cut-aways which show Gene et al outside of Alex's vicinity. Additionally, how the bloody hell does Alex know that Sam went back to 1973 as confirmed by Gene?

>The "formula" common between LoM and Ashes to Ashes starts to wear thin - it's fun to see the test card girl replaced with a scary David Bowie clown, and for the puppets from Rainbow to address Alex Drake in her dreams, but it also feels a bit old hat and inconsequential.

This also sums up the problem; if Alex is definitely somehow living imagined days in the seconds before a bullet hits her then all this stuff with the clown and the rainbow characters *is* inconsequential, it doesn't mean anything at all and the writers would have been better leaving it all out and just focusing on the police stuff. The fact that they're leaving it in would suggest there's rather more to tell.

> what's the point of the bloke from 2008 being angry with her over something that happened in 1981

What was the point of the crossover into Sam's history? Turned out - none.

> what's the point of the clown?

It's an equivalent of the test card. It keeps things spooky. Because we're in someone's brain.

> Part of what kept people watching LOM was the fact that the programme kept feeding them a mystery.

It kept IMPLYING a mystery, then revealed there not to be one. Doesn't mean this will be different.

> If that was all solved at the end of LOM then what's the point of doing all this "mystery clown" stuff since we "know" what it's all about?

It's spooky! It reminds us it's not real!

> Something else people have noted is that whilst LOM focused on Sam in order to keep the "is it real or is it him?" mystery going, ATA has cut-aways which show Gene et al outside of Alex's vicinity.

Same old points, same rebuttals. The same happens in Titanic with the flashbacks. Standard writing device. Doesn't have to mean anything - and nothing either show did suggests otherwise.

I doesn't need literal interpretation, but if you want one - people can dream scenes they're not in. Happens all the time.

> Additionally, how the bloody hell does Alex know that Sam went back to 1973 as confirmed by Gene?

Um, she doesn't. But she has two choices - either he did or she didn't. And she knows why he carked it.

But again, that's a literal interpretation. A realistic one is this: It's a TV show that wants to acknowledge what went before. Would "He left us and never came back and we never understood why" work for the manstream audience being played to? Nope, cos them remember differently.

The list of scenes - film and TV - where characters know stuff that the audience knows, but they haven't been shown to learn themselves, would knock your socks off. It happens all the time. Most of the time it blows past, but certain LoM fans have this thing under a microscope and seem to be deciding that EVERYTHING is relevant.

> This also sums up the problem; if Alex is definitely somehow living imagined days in the seconds before a bullet hits her then all this stuff with the clown and the rainbow characters *is* inconsequential, it doesn't mean anything at all and the writers would have been better leaving it all out and just focusing on the police stuff. The fact that they're leaving it in would suggest there's rather more to tell.

No, it suggests it's lightweight and inconsequential, but stylish. Just like Life on Mars was.

"No, it suggests it's lightweight and inconsequential, but stylish. Just like Life on Mars was."

And if all the policing/A Team/armed bastards/Gene Hunt (et al) is as entertaining as LoM has been, then I'm all for it. Agree with the hope that Alex realises that waking up now is a bad plan for now.

Buugeritmilleniumhandandshrimp - Accidentally used the funky angular brackets normally reserved for HTML... so, er:

Addendum - The only misstep, for my money at least, was in setting up Alex as 'astute' in both generally and questioning the world she finds herself in only to let her simply accept that her delusions can tell us what eventually happened to Sam. No, it doesn't prove her theory, just that she wants to believe so - "Gene" indeed.

On the other hand, this is the only way the writers are really able to conclude Sam's saga and getting a chance to make Hunt seem more heroic at the same time is neat-ish.

>No, it suggests it's lightweight and inconsequential, but stylish. Just like Life on Mars was.

I think you're going with the (incorrect in my opinion) idea that what we saw in the last episode of LOM was the answer in full. Let's face it - Sam was always in a coma, we knew that and the red herring stuff in the last episode was a bit obvious. Given that the producers have said ATA is a sequel rather than a spin-off, that the "all a dream" explanation is a byword for "crap ending" in writing and that, over three episodes, ATA has played-up Drake's "ooh, I know this is all just in my head!" stuff a bit too much I can't help but think they want to play-out the mystery a bit more. It was part of what kept people watching LOM and ATA is, essentially, LOM series three in the only way they could manage it after Simm decided to leave. Given the options of them closing the book on the central mystery element at the end of series two of LOM or of them hoodwinking us all and playing it out further in the continuity series I'd plump for the latter. Sorry to sound presumptious but I'm a writer myself, I know how writers think and that's the obvious thing to do and all the stuff we've seen so far suggests that as well.

Of course, you could be right and the clown and all the associated stuff might just be pointless "ooh, isn't it spooky?" window-dressing in which case I'll concede your point that the writers are essentially a bit crap; but I'll wait until it all plays out first.

>I doesn't need literal interpretation, but if you want one - people can dream scenes they're not in. Happens all the time.

Didn't happen in LOM, though, in order to keep the mystery element going. But it's happened in ATA despite it being the same writers and production crew. The whole point of it in LOM was that, because Sam was always around when things were happening, the audience was left uncertain as to whether things stopped happening when they moved out of his field of perception (there was a nice nod to this in E1 when Anne leaves his flat then pops her head around and say "still here!"). Sorry, but I think it is extremely odd that they've decided to have scenes (and literally only one or two per episode) that take place when Drake is absent if it's "all just a dream".

> I'll concede your point that the writers are essentially a bit crap

Don't think that was actually my point...

> Sorry to sound presumptious but I'm a writer myself, I know how writers think

In my experience 'all writers' don't think only one way about much of anything!

I think you're applying how you'd write AtA - which is to say, with more attention to detail than LoM ever had, more consistency than they were ever concerned about. I'm happy to believe that twists may come, but I think you're chasing a lot of details that, in the end, this crew aren't fussed about. Some may matter, a lot won't, and it won't stop people theorising, just as they did after LoM ended, stated its case, and dumped its glitches.

The rest we can go round and round on, so may as well just wait, I guess! Especially as I'm actually preferring this show now I don't need to pick at the details this way...

>Sorry to sound presumptious but I'm a writer myself, I know how writers think

Sorry to sound presumptuous, but I'm a writer myself, but more importantly I'm a reader, and I'm hugely insulted by the idea that anyone would claim to know "how writers think." I think that a sentiment such as that betrays, at best, a fundamental confusion about how writing--or, hell, art--works.

Also, "sounding presumptuous" is more effective when you spell the word correctly. You know...for next time...

I think Phil obviously lost his ticket to the most recent Writers Convention, where the rules for how we'd all think over the next twelve months were clearly laid out.

when he jumps of the building its ment to meen that the time it takes to hit the floor will stretch out through his lifetime in the 70s

and when he drives away in the car he is going into his after life

I disagree; he'd go to Lego Land. Bye.