If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

Ashes to Ashes

Thursdays, BBC1

Life on Mars was a decent television series. It was good but not great. If the last few minutes hadn’t been so bad it might’ve been great. But it was a series which kept telling you that the end would be worth waiting for and when it came, it wasn’t. When it came out that they were going to do a sequel people were surprised. Most TV programmes could spawn a sequel of one calibre or another but surely if ever there was one which couldn’t it was Life on Mars.

So what’s different this time round? Well, the decade has changed. They’ve milked the 70s for all its references and jokes so now it is the turn of the 80s. Manchester has been swapped for London, the music is more synthetic, the clothes are slightly less hideous, the haircuts are more sensible, the ties are narrower and... oh yes – this time it’s a woman that has gone back in time. Surely that must be enough to make it seem fresh and different.

The gimmicks have changed and for a lot of shows that would’ve been enough to make the production team think they were making something new. Like the Bionic Woman being a totally different series to the Six Million Dollar Man because he was an astronaut and she’s a tennis player. Ashes to Ashes doesn’t simply rely on Keeley Hawes having different bits to John Simm – the different is that she knows for a fact that she’s in an hallucination created by her own subconscious at the moment of death. There is no ambiguity. Life on Mars was built around the question of what had really happened to Sam Tyler. Whether this change in emphasis will help or hurt the series has yet to be seen.

As a first episode this had a lot going for it. There was Keeley Hawes spending most of it with her stocking tops showing. There was the almost messianic portrayal of Gene Hunt. There was a cameo by Zippy and George from Rainbow. There was what I assume was some nifty CGI to recreate the derelict London docks. There was a soundtrack which I could relate to a lot more than that of Life on Mars. There was Keeley Hawes spending most of it with her stocking tops showing. There was the retro computer type face used for the end credits. Stocking tops. Mostly it was the stocking tops. She wore that outfit for simply ages. And it seems even longer in slow motion.

Actually, I think my favourite bit was when she’s shown into the stock room filled with old fashioned junk and Chris says "I know – it’s like Tomorrow’s World in ‘ere." Deep down I’m a geek first, a pervert second.

The plot was very much secondary to the setting up of the series premise. I know there were drug dealers and there was quite a lot of shooting at the end but that’s about it. I kept hoping Zippy would turn out to be Mr Big but it wasn’t to be – Keeley was right and Gene and I were both wrong. It was a nice touch that Chris was blasted by machine gun fire for almost a minute without actually being hit. I’m assuming this was a joke based around him being part of Gene’s "A-Team" which famously used a lot of bullets and spilled very little blood. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit.

I don’t know whether I have much hope for Ashes to Ashes. The series needs a big twist to keep it interesting in the absence of any question about what is really going on. The twist at the end of Life on Mars was so weak that I’m not sure I trust the writers this time.

(That is to say the final twist in Life on Mars – the final episode’s swerve about Sam being under deep cover was very nearly brilliant and would’ve made a far better finale than him jumping off a building because he was in lurve with a figment of his imagination.)

There is also the question of whether the Alex-Gene dynamic can be as good as the Sam-Gene relationship. The key to the latter was that neither of them was entirely right – sometimes Gene was more right than Sam, others vice versa. Sometimes Gene’s methods worked, other times Sam’s methods worked. It is a lot easier in television for a man to look weak and yet remain strong than it is for a woman. I wonder if we’ll ever see her proved wrong as her psychological theories lose out to Gene’s brute force and copper’s nouse? And if that happens, will we then have to go through lots of tedious scenes of her having to prove herself again?

The clown – I don’t like it. It’s much too clichéd. It’ll mean something at some point but until then it’ll just be annoying. Apparently it’s from some David Bowie music video. I know little of the Dame’s work. Why couldn’t Zippy have been her link to whatever it is that’s going on? Or better yet – George. Zippy was always hogging the limelight. Let George be the voice of her subconscious.

There are ultimately two ways to approach Ashes to Ashes. You can either just enjoy it for what it is on a week by week basis or you can see each episode as just another step up to the big finale. The latter approach – which is probably what I’ll do because I can’t help it – won’t lead to fun and happiness. There is a lot to enjoy in Ashes to Ashes if you just let it happen. If there is a big finish then that’s a bonus. Go looking for an epic and, as history has already shown us, disappointment awaits.

"Disappointment" – noun – knowing we’ve seen the last of Keeley Hawes’ stockings.