A Rise From 'Ashes'

I’ve seen the future, and it’s set in 1981.

That’s the year that modern-day policewoman Alex Drake is transported back to in the new BBC America series Ashes to Ashes. Ironically, the show’s Stateside debut on March 7 comes just days after ABC announced that it was canceling its Americanized version of another U.K. import, Life On Mars - the original time-travel-meets-police-procedural that inspired the Ashes sequel in the first place.

Mars, a two-season Brit hit, made it to cable here via BBCA. But for its broadcast run, the show was retrofitted with a closer-to-home setting - 1970s-era Manchester, England, was replaced with the mean streets of New York City - and recast with faces familiar to American audiences such as Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli.

The result was a respectfully reviewed show that got high marks for its evocative production design and soundtrack but never caught on with viewers. For all its visual and aural trappings, the show just didn’t generate much dramatic heat.

Now Ashes is making its maiden voyage across the pond. That means actors you may not have heard of speaking in accents that you may not be able to decipher making cultural references that you may not get - all of which could conspire against it scoring the mass audience the show deserves.

That would be a bloody shame because Ashes is great TV. Not great British TV or great period-piece TV. Great TV.

One of the show’s executive producers likens it to a little bit of Moonlighting and a touch of Miami Vice. The love-hate sparks between Drake and her boss Gene Hunt certainly recall the former; and the period flavor - even if these cops are speedboating down the Thames - conjures up an Anglicized version of the latter.

But if Ashes borrows some transatlantic TV formula elements, it weaves them into something unique - a witty, compelling blend of sci-fi and action that playfully evokes the New Romantic vibe of the 1980s at the same time that it references dark chapters in history, past and present, from terrorism to AIDS.

Oh, and did I mention it’s fun to watch?

Ashes is ostensibly about Drake (Keeley Hawes, who is quite good) and her efforts to get back to the future after a bullet lands her in temporal limbo. But, as with Mars, the show’s propelling agent is really Hunt (Philip Glenister), aka Gene Genie.

Glenister doesn’t play the spectacularly politically incorrect Hunt so much as embody him. Whereas Keitel’s American version is more caricature drawn in heavy lines and loud colors, Glenister’s Hunt is a real character carefully drawn with a blowtorch. For all his boorishness, bravado and brutality, Glenister makes Hunt the life of a wild party that you can’t tear yourself away from.

Considering the demise of ABC’s Life On Mars, an Americanized Ashes may not be likely. But you never know. Let’s hope not.