I just watched Life on Mars and loved it and while I never expected this show to be as good I was going to stick with it until the end but as per the second episode I am already annoyed with Keeley Hawes who is just an awful actress.
Does she get better or is it just the start?
A lady walks into a cocktail bar and orders a Double Entendre.The barman gives her one
yes. well, you get used to it. its all worth while in the end
shareHa ha! Mercifully, I saw Ashes BEFORE ever watching an episode of Life on Mars. If I had watched in the correct order, I would have been sickened with disappointment at the spinoff.
Instead, I was delighted at how much better LOM is!!! (I mean no offence to Ashes fans. It's a cute show and I like it! ....But Life On Mars is the best show I've ever seen in my life.)
Keeley Hawes doesn't change through the three series, but the show itself does: S1 is a rehash of LOM with a different main character, S2 has its own identity, and S3 spends its time redefining LOM and teasing the audience with talk of Sam Tyler.
I see what you mean by getting used to it. It really does get better in the 2nd season. She seems less arrogant or something.
A lady walks into a cocktail bar and orders a Double Entendre.The barman gives her one
I found Keeley Hawes intensely irritating in the first series, but she does get better. I think once Alex accepts that the place she is in and the people there are "real" and not a figment of her imagination, "constructs" or some kind of breakdown, she mellows out a lot.
shareI think Keeley Hawes is a good actress.
****
It's in your nature to destroy yourselves. (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
Yeah much better. I loved LoM but stopped watching A2A after 3 eps as I thought she was awful, especially compared to John Simm. But then suddenly in ep 4 the whole show just raises it game and she becomes incredibly likeable. Keep watching, its as rewarding as LoM.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." Ambrose Bierce
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I didn't think Keeley Hawes did a bad job, to be honest. She was kind of disadvantaged in that she had a very tough act to follow in John Simm, and that the rest of the main cast, with the exception of Montserrat Lombard, knew their roles inside out. But she grew into the role, particularly from the second series.
Alex is a very annoying character in the first few episodes of series 1, but she's supposed to be annoying: she arrives in Gene Hunt's kingdom having studied Sam Tyler's case and thinks she knows it all - which, I suppose, is a similar situation to those viewers who had followed LOM. Then events conspire to throw her - and the viewer - out of their respective comfort zones, and Alex becomes a more sympathetic character.
"There he is. Half Iago, half Fu Manchu, all bastard."
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I also had doubts before watching the show.LoM is one of the best shows I've ever seen and I really love John Simm as Sam Tyler.So it was hard to see Alex with the original cast but I think Hawes does her best in all the episodes I've seen so far.I'm in s3 and I'm glad not to give up at the beginning series 1:D
shareIt's all personal taste. To me this series had a feeling of trying to wrap-up the Life On Mars series without having John Simm.
Series 1 just felt pointless. Like they were rehashing LOM, but with a different lead. The story of Alex trying to help her parents didn't help, because you'd invested no time in getting to know Alex, so you didn't quite feel the same tension about her saving mum and dad as you would if it was a character you already knew.
Series 2 was a bit better, but it still felt a bit John Simm-less. At least Series 3, his presence hung over the show, without him being there and they tried to explain what happened to him.
The problem is not with anybody, per se. Just I didn't feel Keeley Hawes had the same chemistry with Philip Genister, so the show was on the back-foot for most of it
I disagree about the chemistry. They had a lot going on there and the emotional stuff there was absolutely amazing especially in the series 2 finale where Gene is begging Alex for the truth and Alex is begging Gene to believe her which he doesn't. I mean that exchange in the office was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen. Then that scene where Gene is explaining to Alex and that "Do I mean nothing to you Gene" and the Goodbye Guv kiss had me in tears. I don't need chemistry but I do need emotion which Keeley and Phil had in spades and felt in every single scene they did.
In regards to Keeley and the series in general. She was always going to be at a disadvantage mainly because she is coming off the back of John Simm and Life On Mars which was perfection from the get go. But I try to be objective and not always base my thoughts and criticism on the fact that Keeley is not John Simm or that Ashes is no Life On Mars. Those arguments to me are not intellectual or credible in my eyes. Here are my two thoughts.
Series 1 - I wouldn't say it was a rehash of life On Mars, they did use the same template as Life On Mars with the same themes but the overall storyline was different and much more powerful because of Alex's relationship with her parents especially with her mum which was linked to her issues of motherhood and Molly. I do agree that they spent little to no time investing into Alex's past and life in 2008 which didn't help for the rest of the series especially in regards to Molly because we hardly ever saw much of that relationship. Series 1 was a different perspective to the same situation. We saw Sam's confused and scared reaction along with the audience because we were thrown head first in a situation with no prior knowledge of it. They could hardly do that again in LOM so Alex is the opposite reaction to Sam, she comes from an analytical and sceptical background due to her psychology which is science based on math and experiments and she has knowledge to Gene and his world due to Sam's notes so she comes in with a pre-conceived idea as to what Gene and the world is and she makes the assumption that everything is all in her head and she has control which gets challenged throughout the series, you see it as early as episode 2 when she describes modern day London to Mr Bond, you can see that she expects him to be in awe of her knowledge but gets a rude shock when Mr Bonds tells her to piss off. The shock is clear on her face, you can tell that she was expecting a different reaction just like when she thought she knew what Gene was going to do with the car when we saw the boxed being stacked up but was proven wrong and was surprised by it. It was demonstrated with Caroline where she expects that she would shake her hand and praise her for being a cop but gets shot down and again she is taken back. So Sam and her are just two sides of the coin.
Series 2 - Again it had a consistent storyline and the tone had gone down a little but the corruption storyline and the Summer's stuff was never really resolved especially the Gene/Alex breakdown and the fact that Alex was set up for murder with her finger prints on the gun used to shoot summers in her flat and also her fingerprints on the chain that was used to tie up Summers. You had very little exploration of Alex's past, it was like she didn't have one - if it wasn't for that one episode with her ex husband and in-laws then all season two would have been was just a normal retro cop show with a bit of science fiction thrown in but then even that didn't explain much about Alex's background or the nature of the relationship.
Series 3 - Felt like a different show, shoehorned in references to Life On Mars where they shouldn't have, dragged in Sam Tyler when it wasn't abut him. The murder accusation was utterly pointless and Alex became a gullible idiot who just stood by and waited for everything to come to her. By season three she had no past, no mention of Molly until the dying seconds of the show, she had a personality transplant and not much brains initiative. The storylines were weak and half hearted and very random like Gene going from flawed but good cop from the 70s to just a schoolboy who didn't know what he was doing...yeah try telling that to all the cops who acted like him and had the same beliefs as him during the time.
Funny things series 1-2 felt like its own show but then in series 3 they tried to redefine everything which was just forced and it made the entire thing look farcical. I put it down to bad storytelling and poor execution and lack of direction. A big difference from Life On Mars which wasn't about the overall mystery of who is gene hunt or the world. It was about the personal journey of Sam Tyler. It should've been kept separated personally.
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