Kier Darby

I just finished watching the final episode of the BBC's Ashes to Ashes . How on earth did the writers manage to take the original Life on Mars concept and turn it into such self-absorbed tripe as was seen tonight? Throughout this third and final season of Ashes , there seems to have been a desperate, ill-conceived attempt to shoehorn a back-story onto the secondary characters (Chris, Ray, Shaz) while at the same time trying to get the audience to believe that Gene Hunt - who has consistently been a hero figure of sorts in the previous four series - might in fact be a villain. First, the 'character development' of the secondary cast. This was a ridiculous idea. It goes against the very reason for the success of the series' format. These characters were conceived as two-dimensional caricatures - eighties stereotypes that everyone who remembers the eighties would recognise instantly. The characters were (surely?) never intended to bring their own history and emotional bac...