Quote:
Originally Posted by cimt
Later this year it comes on isn't it? I don't think it will be good without John Simm coz him thinking he's going mental was part of the goodness of it all. Is this meant to be set a couple of years after or something happened to them to make them think they're in the future?
|
It's 1981, which is 7 years after Life on Mars. But I wouldn't read too much into the setting or Gene Hunt's presence in the story - an awful lot of that went on after the final episode of Life on Mars was aired, but an interview with one of the creators in the Manchester Evening News within a week put paid to most of the theories of what it all meant.
It was quite straightforward in the end - he was in a coma, he was having some kind of delusion or dream in his coma, he woke up, didn't like life any more, and committed suicide by jumping off Police HQ's roof. His 'return' to 1973 at the very end took place in the final minutes of his life in the real world. We never get to see just how long Sam gets to live in the 1970s during those final seconds.
However we do know that while briefly back at work in 2006, he filed a complete report of his 1970s dream for the benefit of a police psychologist - who will now be played by Keely Hawes in Ashes to Ashes. Expect for her to get a nasty bump on the head and then find herself in her own delusional world whose characters and situations are fuelled not just by her own upbringing (as Sam's was) but also by having just read Sam's incredible story of Gene Hunt and co.
It's going to be fun, but don't expect it to be any deeper or strangely metaphysical than that.
EDIT
...Unless, of course, the creators' description of what it meant having been in the MEN and not actually within the programme itself, they change their minds and decide to portray it as some kind of alternate reality ...
But I doubt it.
