Ashes to Ashes writers talk Series 2

I just popped back from a BBC organised chat with the co-writers of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes - very illuminating. The guys were Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham.

The chat was mainly about script-writing for TV as was aimed for budding TV writers - yes I am giving it a pop - but all the same I gleaned some titbits.

Matthew talked about the fact that they had aways wanted Series 1 of Ashes to be darker but had basically not been allowed; this was partly because Alex is supposed to be like the viewer and 'in on the joke' that she knows she is in a coma (Sam didn't know this for sure).

I think the Beeb wanted them to be more upbeat as a result where I think they wanted her to be more wry athough still 'playful'. I thought 'aha' as you can see these two different tones sometimes battling against each other in the first series.

In Series 2 however they are now freer and they promise it will be 'darker' and explore the 'bigger mysteries' of the characters and world. They were still talking about there being a third series and that they do have a three year plan. Undoubtedly they'll have a plan to merge Series 2 and 3 if it appears 3 isn;t needed/wanted though didn't say that much.

Really interestingly they talked about how much Philip Glenister shaped the role of Gene Hunt and really the whole of Life on Mars. They admitted they had not planned Mars to be a 'buddy' show at a until they saw early on that Phil was taking the character to another level, and they started to feed Gene better lines and stories, really on a par with Sam.

Perhaps not surprisingly they said as a result Phil realy quizzed them about what they had planned for Ashes as his character was now really the lead. "It could have been hard on Philip," said Ashley. "If it had failed it would have looked like he had failed because John Simm wasn't there," or words to that effect.

Series 2 will feature much more 'muscular' 80s policing stories he promised, and it appears that this will be central to the overall arc of Series 2.

In terms of all of our theories about whether the world of Ashes is different to Mars, he particularly noted that they had 'broken the rules' on all scenes having to have Alex in them in Ashes, whereas they didn't with Sam in Mars.

I didn't get any sense they have done this for any reason other than it's bloody hard to write a series with a single character in every scene. IE we shouldn't read too much into it.

There's more stuff that will probably come out in my time at the Railway Arms.