Article: "Gene Hunt? He's Just So Sexy"

From the Manchester Evening News, February 7, 2008.

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It's always unwise for men to try to predict what women are thinking. But I'd hazard a guess that being picked up and carried into a police station in the arms of Gene Hunt might be near the top of a few female wish lists.

Keeley Hawes didn't mind a bit when she made her debut as dazed DI Alex Drake in Life On Mars sequel Ashes To Ashes (BBC1, tonight, 9pm).

"I'm going to get things thrown at me in the street, but Gene's a real man. He's like your dad, in the best possible way. He's sort of everything you want," she says.

"You want a man to scoop you up, I think, as a woman. You do. All this bull about being equal and all the rest is all well and good.

"But, ultimately, I think it's lovely as a sort of fantasy that she's having, that Gene is somebody to look to, somebody that will look after you, somebody that will defend you.

"When girlfriends of mine watch it, they say, `Oh my God, he's so sexy.' You think, `Yeah, he is.' And he's a challenge for her."

Shot in the head, 2008 police psychologist Alex wakes up in 1981 and finds herself working alongside DCI Hunt, played by Philip Glenister, who has moved from Manchester to London.

Having studied the case notes of Sam Tyler (John Simm) and his coma recollections of life in 1973, she knows just who Gene, Ray (Dean Andrews) and Chris (Marshall Lancaster) are.

But Alex believes them and their world to be fantasies created within her own mind.

On the edge of life, she fights to return "home" to daughter Molly, while stalked in 1981 by a Pierrot clown - representing death - inspired by the figure in David Bowie's Ashes To Ashes video.

Viewers who reckon this is simply a re-run of Life On Mars may be in for a surprise as the story develops. The year 1981 is significant as it's when Alex's parents were killed in a car bomb. She arrives in July of that year, three months before the explosion.

High-profile

Episode two features the first meeting between DI Drake and her mother Caroline Price, a high-profile lawyer played by former Coronation Street star Amelia Bullmore. She, of course, has no idea who Alex really is.

"That's why she thinks she is back there... to stop their death or find out the reasons for it. She has to put the pieces of the puzzle together," explains Keeley, about the main storyline linked to the Ashes To Ashes title.

After the initial scooping up, sparks fly as Alex spars with her "imaginary constructs".

By episode three we see her giving Gene a right-hand slap, followed by a left-hand punch.

"I think she enjoys 1981, secretly, much more than 2008 - like Sam eventually did realise that he actually preferred their way of doing things.

"She does find it exciting. I think she finds Gene very exciting. But she has this dilemma with her daughter that she has to go back to."

Like John Simm and Life On Mars, Keeley is in nearly every scene of Ashes To Ashes.

"I went to see this play with my hair still in a perm and bumped into John. It was really nice to talk to somebody who had been through that, and to both go, `Yeah, my God, this is what it's like.' It was like survivors of a crash or something. It was really nice to see him and he's been very sweet about me and everyone."

The year 1981 was two years into Mrs Thatcher's first term as prime minister - or "The Great Handbag", as Gene calls her. The first yuppies are in town and the landmark Scarman report on that year's Brixton riots is on the horizon. Keeley admits she felt pressure coming into one of the most anticipated dramas of 2008.

"It's nice to have a comfort blanket, because there's already interest in it. But, by the same token, it's really terrifying because you don't want to let anybody down and be the weak link. I know it was a part that lots of people would like to have taken on. So, yeah, I'm pretty scared."

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