Television series

Ashes to Ashes

Name: Ashes to Ashes
Genre: Drama, Crime, Fantasy
Released: 2008
Cast: Philip Glenister, Keeley Hawes, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster, Montserrat Lombard

Ashes to Ashes is the swaggering sequel to Life on Mars, swapping Manchester grit for Thatcher's London and New Romantic gloss. DI Alex Drake, shot and stranded in 1981, chases the same question her predecessor did — afterlife, coma, or something worse — while DCI Gene Hunt struts through it all in a camel coat. Big hair, bigger mystery, surprisingly tender underneath the strut.

TVMaze rating

7.6

If you liked this

Prime Suspect1991

Helen Mirren's DCI Jane Tennison fights her way through a police force that resents her, exactly the friction Alex Drake feels in Gene Hunt's boys' club — but played utterly straight, with no time-travel cushion.

But It's bleak and procedural, taking its time; none of Ashes to Ashes's neon energy or wisecracks soften the misogyny it depicts.

Endeavour2012

A moodier, more melancholic period crime drama — Oxford in the 1960s instead of London in the '80s — with the same obsessive eye for décor, music and class tension.

But It's slower and more mournful than Ashes to Ashes; the fantasy is gone, replaced by ordinary grief and career politics.

Luther2010

Idris Elba's DCI John Luther is another oversized, coat-wearing force of nature bending the rules of policing to breaking point — Gene Hunt's more dangerous, less funny cousin.

But It trades period nostalgia and banter for genuinely disturbing serial-killer plotting; darker than anything Alex Drake faces.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Quantum Leap1989

Same structural engine — a displaced protagonist working through other people's problems in a borrowed identity while chasing the way home — just filtered through American network optimism instead of British melancholy.

Sam Beckett leaps through decades trying to fix small wrongs and get home, exactly Alex Drake's situation reframed as breezy American sci-fi — a person stuck in someone else's era, chasing the mechanism that will send them back.

But Much lighter and more optimistic; each episode resolves neatly, with none of Ashes to Ashes's creeping dread or mythology.

Life on Mars2006

The American remake of the original show this series spun from, set in 1973 New York — a curious, glossier mirror if you want the same premise reshot for a different audience.

But It's tonally softer and cancelled after one season; feels like a photocopy rather than its own thing.

Broadchurch2013

A slower-burning British crime drama that trades fantasy for grief made devastatingly literal, with the same instinct for turning a small community into a pressure cooker.

But Utterly earthbound — no time slips, no Gene Hunt one-liners, just a very sad, very good whodunnit.

The Fall2013

Gillian Anderson's detective works a case in Belfast with the cool authority Alex Drake wishes she had, in a show far more interested in psychology than plot twists.

But Deliberately paced and genuinely unsettling; it wants to sit with dread rather than entertain you out of it.

Peaky Blinders2013

If it's the strut, the soundtrack and the sheer style you love, here's the same swagger transplanted to 1920s Birmingham gangsters — pure widescreen cool.

But No mystery-box plotting or afterlife puzzle, just a crime family saga; the connection is vibe only.

Mad Men2007

For the other end of period-drama obsession: the clothes, the music, the interior décor of a decade rendered with fanatical precision, minus any fantasy scaffolding.

But Glacially slow by comparison, and entirely serious — advertising executives, not coppers with time-travel amnesia.

New Tricks2004no page yet

If you want the banter and generational-clash comedy of Gene Hunt's squad room without the fantasy or grief, this cold-case comedy-drama scratches the same itch gently.

But Cosy where Ashes to Ashes is uncanny; it has none of the show's melancholy or mystery.

Jacob's Ladder1990

Both are, underneath the genre dressing, about a person refusing to accept they might already be dead — Jacob's Ladder plays that idea completely straight, stripped of Gene Hunt's jokes and Alex's designer coats.

A Vietnam veteran can't tell if he's alive, dreaming, or dead, and the answer, once it lands, recontextualises everything you've watched — the purgatory idea Ashes to Ashes is quietly built on, taken utterly seriously.

But This is genuine psychological horror, unsettling and grim, with none of the humour or period fun carrying you through the BBC show.

The Singing Detective1986no page yet

Both use a decade's pop songs and a fractured, possibly-dying narrator's perspective to blur fantasy and reality — Potter did it first, on a hospital ward instead of in 1981 CID, and Ashes to Ashes's whole soundtrack gimmick descends from it.

Dennis Potter's landmark miniseries has a bedridden pulp writer's fantasies, memories and hospital ward bleed into one another through old pop songs — the exact device Ashes to Ashes borrows for its soundtrack-as-psychology trick, done first and stranger.

But Slower, theatrical, occasionally uncomfortable television from another era of the BBC; the musical numbers are deliberately jarring, not fun set pieces.