Keeley Hawes, fun in Agent Provocateur

BBC America television series sequel to Life on Mars takes 21st century cop back to Eighties  **** 4 stars

By Robin Rowe

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 3/20/2009 – Like Torchwood, Ashes to Ashes is a British cop show with a time travel twist. However, there are no flying dinosaurs or interplanetary aliens in Ashes to Ashes.

Detective Inspector Alex Drake, who uses her skills as a psychological profiler to capture the bad guys, finds herself waking up in 1981 after being shot. “It’s always a pleasure to dress as Alex in the morning,” says star Keeley Hawes. “I get to wear some Agent Provocateur underwear. There was nothing classy about me or the ’80s. However, it was great fun.”

Ashes to Ashes pits self-styled “Sheriff of Manchester” hard-nosed Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt, from the series Life on Mars, against the scum of London. “Gene never gives much away,” says Philip Glenister who stars as Hunt. “His wife has left him. The job came up, so he took it. My favorite scene to film would have to be when we were on a speed boat going under Tower Bridge carrying machine guns.”

“Ashes to Ashes is the next chapter in the life of Gene Hunt, as seen through the eyes of a modern, no-nonsense woman,” says Kudos executive producer Jane Featherstone. “It’s a touch of Moonlighting teamed with a measure of Miami Vice. Keeley is fantastic as Alex ‘posh knickers’ Drake. She’s sexy, ballsy and very intelligent…and turns Gene’s egocentric life upside down!”

The Eighties is personified by the clothes, the hair, and especially the cars. “The Quattro was one of the first four-wheel drives that properly clung to the ground,” says Glenister. “That’s why everyone wanted one. But, we couldn’t do Gene’s high-speed handbrake turns, so we had to fit a hydraulic handbrake so I could rag it round those corners! It’s a two-door car as well, so Ray and Chris can only get out the back when I say so.”

“We shot some scenes with a DeLorean which was fab,” says Hawes. “It felt really ‘80s. There’s nothing more ‘80s than that car. It’s just like the car in Back to the Future.”

Where were the real Hawes and Glenister in the 1980s? “I remember my sister wearing a denim boiler suit,” says Hawes. “I was five or six, so I don’t really have an enormous amount of memories of that time.”

“I was just trying to get laid while listening to Human League,” says Glenister. “I remember Charles and Diana’s wedding because I went and slept on The Mall with some mates the night before, so we could be near the front. On the day, their carriage went past and they waved I was convinced Diana gave me the eye.”

Ashes to Ashes is a low tech Sci-Fi crime thriller set in the past, sort of a reverse Bladerunner. Hawes is an ambitious single mother ripped from the present day world of technology and sexual equality. However, her psychological and analytical skills still work in 1981. She finds herself teamed with familiar characters from her past and from the detailed reports she’s been studying, logged by Sam Tyler who claimed he was thrown back to 1973. For Gene Hunt, who prefers dealing roughly with the “southern nancy” (London) criminal scene, relying on a sexy, strong-willed intelligent female detective who believes she’s from the 21st Century isn’t a welcome change.

Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars each take their title from a David Bowie record. Life on Mars has been adapted for ABC. Kudos Film & Television produces the series for the BBC, which was broadcast on BBC One starting in 2008. The first season of Ashes to Ashes is set in 1981, during the Princess Diana’s wedding and the Brixton Riots. The second season started filming in the summer of 2008. It’s set in 1982, during the Falklands War.

Ashes to Ashes
BBC America, Saturdays, 9pm PST