Actor Philip Glenister has hinted at what's in store for Gene Hunt and the team in the new series of Ashes to Ashes which returns to our screens later this month.
Most important in this is the presence of Gene Hunt in the 1980s, an anachronism of policing whose ways and methods are relics of a bygone era - the 1970s. There is an interesting theme of police corruption running through the second series of Ashes to Ashes, one that will put the old fashioned DCI Hunt in direct conflict with his superiors.
"In this series of Ashes To Ashes Gene is still out there being a maverick, but what I always say about him is that, while he bends the rules, he never breaks them. He merely manipulates and stretches them a bit!"
It is these skills that Hunt will need to employ, as well as those of his team. While the future for Alex Drake is shrouded in mystery at this stage - will she get back to 2008 or not? - the immediate future for the entire team looks to be one of survival in the face of instutional corruption.
This is of course heavy content for a series whose basic premise is a 21st century copper thrown back in time, but given the settings proximity to the early 1990s police corruption serial Between the Lines, what better way to investigate some of the same themes during a period of upheaval and uncertainty in the Metropolitan Police?
Gene Hunt has of course been criticised by those without any clue about real life, real values and real people - criticised as a stereotype and a dinosaur. This misses the point - Philip Glenister portrays Hunt in Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars as a modern day sheriff, an archetypal 1970s CID officer with principles and a desire to clean up the city, whatever the consequences.
"If anything he is a decent and honest copper and he'll usually only collar unsavoury characters. I love the western connotation with Hunt; he is exactly like a Sheriff and sees himself very much in that guise. However, the problem is that he is out of his depth in the Eighties metropolis of London and the bottom line is he is a Seventies copper at heart."
Post new comment