Ashes to Ashes instapundit [purplecthulhu]

I wondered how they were going to play this. A straight rerun of LoM wouldn't work, and they're not doing that. Havign a psychologist (not a psychiatrist) who 'knows' what's going on is going to be interesting, but also threatens to undermine some of the core metaphors by being too knowing. The first episode went well, though some parts of it were actively painful - Miami-Upon-Thames anyone? Only but Miami Vice hadn't stated in 1981... And the nostalgia is, as

del_c says, going to be really painful because many of us were there bring the people having the piss made of them.

I'm also going to have geography trouble. I know London, so I have a fair idea where some of it is filmed as well as where it's meant to be. I probably walked past that junk shop under the arches twenty times in the last year, for example. So when they get it wrong it'll break. I don't know Manchester so that wasn't a problem (the only one I had an issue with there were the anachronistic airco units hanging out the back of a factory in one episode).

But it was fun...

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Forget Miami Vice, this is Dempsey and Makepeace.

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(Which only started in 1984, I've subsequently realised.)

We were going "ooh, London Wall! Oooh, Bishopsgate Goods Yard! Oooh!" We bloody well recognised the river coppers' *walkway* even though none of the episode is actually set in that station!

(We also reckoned that half that station were going "GENE HUNT!" for the motorboat scene - we have a couple of friends who are retired river police and have been lucky enough to be taken out on a RIB by the police. Followed by a lot of booze in the pub afterwards.)

Also, apart from the fact that my eldest sister did indeed wear skirts, Keeley Hawes looks disturbingly like she did going out to the disco in 1981.

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*home*

Yeah, it was rather ... annoying ... but also really satisfying to identify the places.

(Do I get negative points for checking the railway lines to see if they were all third rail or if they'd missed a bit of blanking out with the DLR???

Oh god, I was thinking "yep, Fenchurch Street line..." a lot as well.

I really hope they don't fuck up the geography too much. and I should check some of those shots where, say, the dome is airbrushed out to see if it works on closer viewing. Glad that eyeTV has freeze frame :-)

In LoM the jarring anachronisms for me were replacement uPVC double glassing in terraced houses in a few background shots.

That stuff wasn't all that common in the late 80s early 90s in those parts of the North West.

I am currently downloading AtA and will see what it's like. Amusingly in this era my father was in charge of the Forensic's branch of New Scotland Yard and my sister was a probationary WPC in Stoke Newington, not a million miles away from some of the areas under discussion.

Wow - that would mean that your father and my uncle, John Jackson, would probably have known each other. He was pretty high up in the forensic branch himself at the time, though may have been in the process of leaving in 1981 as he was quite ill.

Jackson? I'll ask my mum she knew most of the forensics people, the name actually rings a bell...

Small world eh?

I have serious geography trouble with Torchwood. There was a chase seen once across an open space and down an arcade, which then opened into the train station. Um, no.

I have that too, and with Dr Who having lived in Cardiff. But it seems to matter less there. After all, a large chunk of space near the St David's centre where they used to film things is now just a big hole in the ground. Who knows what they'll build there, and since both those shows are potentially at some nebulous point in the future...

With LoM and now moreso with AtA they're trying to be historical, it's an essential part of the production, in places I was wandering around and getting to know very well just a year or two after its intended date.

but none of that matters...GENE's back

:-D

Re geography trouble, SB had that with the first LoM episode, she sewars blind that where he had his accident is the Sheffield flyover thing, nowhere near Manchester. I know not, naturally.

It was nice to see the derelict riverside buildings and similar, although I barely know the area at all today, let alone from back then.

Those buildings are, I think, further down into docklands, near to London City Airport.

purplecthulhu

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December