12 months of Gene Hunt

Had I but known that such a thing was available then I'd have put it on my Xmas list but I only spotted it today in the shops:


It seems to be out of stock at many online retailers, amazon marketplace has one at £99.99...

Philip Glenister wins Best Actor Award

From the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards list:

Best Actor
Philip Glenister
(Mr Carter in Cranford, Gene Hunt in Life on Mars, for BBC One)

Pictures taken from the official Philip Glenister website.

Life on Mars to be remade for Spain

From The Times:

Fire up the Seat coupé, Señor Gene Hunt. Life on Mars is being transported to Spain after the country that gave the world machismo bought the remake rights to the show.

The award-winning time-travel police drama recreated the grim realities of Manchester in 1973. But Vida en Marte will be set in 1978, allowing the Spanish writers to dramatise a society emerging from the Franco dictatorship, which ended with the General's death in 1975, and avoid including some of the nastier aspects of life in a police state.

Antena 3, the leading Spanish commercial broadcaster, signed a deal yesterday with the BBC to remake the series. Casting will now begin for a Spanish actor to take the plum role of the hard-living, sexist Detective Chief Inspector Hunt.

Mercedes Gamero, Antena 3 head of acquisitions, believes that Life on Mars will be a prime-time hit — with a few tweaks. She told The Times: “We need to move the series forward to 1978 to recreate the characters. For example, no women were allowed in the police force under Franco. Under Franco, the police were seen as an important arm of the political regime. By 1978 there was a new openness in Spain which would have been challenging to some members of the police. There was a culture of machismo among Spanish men which has changed a lot.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Philip Glenister Interview on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross

I finally got to watch Ashes to Ashes last night and caught the announcement at the end that Philip Glenister would be on the Jonathan Ross show (he wasn't listed as a guest in the tv guide) so I watched the segment on the BBC iplayer. You can watch it for the next 5 days, here, about 42 mins in.

Ashes to Ashes - countdown to 7 Feb...

An article in The Telegraph today about Ashes to Ashes has the writers giving their point of view:

'We knew we couldn't have Sam Tyler, considering Life on Mars was all in his head,' Pharoah says. But early last year, he and Graham were travelling to London from their homes near Bath for a meeting with Kudos, the production company that had made Life on Mars. 'I remember vividly, we were on the train between Swindon and Reading and we had the idea: what if a senior female police psychiatrist was so obsessed with Tyler's suicide that somehow she gets in trouble in the present and her mind throws her back to a time and place that was incredibly important to her? Which was London in 1981, when her parents died in a car bomb. Then we got excited and giggling about television shows from the early 1980s. We were off then…'

as well as Philip Glenister on Gene Hunt:

'Gene Hunt sees Alex Drake, thinks he wants to shag her brains out, but knows he never will.' Glenister admits he is 'a bit defensive' about Gene, and was worried when he heard the one-liner that was issued to the press when the new series was announced last year: 'a cross between Miami Vice and Moonlighting'. He recalls thinking with a wince, 'Gene Hunt doesn't do romance.'

Read the whole article here and you can also read producer Beth Willis's diary written as the first few episodes were shot.

Ashes to Ashes - sneak peak

Tube Talk over on Digital Spy is now a blog and is updated more frequently. Today they they have a photo of the cast of Ashes to Ashes (Life on Mars II) in their 80s get up as well as answers to a few questions eg:

So no Sam Tyler? No, John Simm is gone (and, according to the show's creator, he really has gone from Ashes To Ashes). In his place is Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), a "modern and independent" detective inspector who suddenly finds herself catapulted back to 1981.

Read more a couple of pages down.

Life on Mars remake - casting news

The BBC and Digital Spy are reporting that Colm Meaney will be joining Jason O'Mara as the two lead characters in the US remake of Life on Mars.

From the BBC:

Meaney is reported to be in talks to star as detective Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister in the BBC version.

The US remake will see Tyler transported back to the 1970s after his girlfriend is abducted.

He will come up against the no-nonsense, old-school detective Hunt as well a serial killer who may have played a part in the abduction.

I think Meaney will do a great job, as he always does, as 'Gene Hunt'.

Ashes to Ashes - casting news

Digital Spy reports that Gene Hunt's new nemesis in Ashes to Ashes, the follow up to Life on Mars, has now been cast:

Former Spooks actress Keeley Hawes has announced that she is going to play a lead role in the BBC drama Ashes To Ashes, the sequel to the highly successful Life On Mars.

Hawes left the MI5 drama in 2004, where she found fame as the character Zoe Reynolds.

Ashes To Ashes is expected to follow a similar story structure to that of Life on Mars, except it will be set in the 1980s, a decade on from the previous series.

She will play Alex Drake, an up-and-coming member of the police force in 2008, who finds herself trapped in the '80s alongside Life On Mars character DCI Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister.

Hawes said of her role: "I'm thrilled to be playing Alex. She's a fantastic character and will be a force to be reckoned with as far as Gene Hunt is concerned; the two of them locking horns in the Eighties will certainly be a sight to behold, never mind the shoulder pads."

Read more about Keeley Hawes on the BBC's website.

The Janissary Tree wins an Edgar

Congratulations to Jason Goodwin for his Edgar win for 'Best Novel'. The full list of nominees and awards can be found here.

The sequel to 'The Janissary Tree', 'The Snake Stone', will be in the US in June and the UK in July.

'The Janissary Tree' was one of three recent historical crime novels published by Faber. See my earlier post.

Also, everyone's favourite tv programme - Life on Mars - won an Edgar for 'Best Television Episode Teleplay' for its first episode.

Another Life on Mars Trailer - Gene Hunt being blunt

As d-day draws near, a second trailer for Life on Mars series 2 has been released. Watch it at Digital Spy.

A little bit more on Life on Mars Series 2

The BBC's press release reveals not surprisingly that:

The second series marks the thrilling finale of the smash hit show and viewers will finally learn the truth about time travelling DI Sam Tyler (John Simm) and how he came to be stuck in 1973. However, fans will have to keep watching until the end of the series on BBC One before their speculative theories are laid to rest.

Executive producer, and joint MD of Kudos, Jane Featherstone, says: "Obviously, we will not be revealing in advance what eventually happens to Sam, as we wouldn't want to spoil everyone's enjoyment of the second half of his story when they watch series two.

"But they can certainly expect some shocking revelations along the way. We have even filmed two endings because we want to keep everyone guessing until the very end."

Synopses of the first four episodes are also available.

Life on Mars & Harry Potter important dates

Just saw the posters in London today. Life on Mars is back on 13th February on BBC1 and also today, an email from Waterstones informs me that 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' will be out on 21st July. (I'm probably the last person in the world to know this having been incommunicado all day).

Life on Mars - series 2 trailer

From TV Scoop:

A 20-second spoof of Camberwick Green has been made by the BBC to promote series 2 of Life on Mars, and is being distributed virally for maximum exposure. In an inventive twist, the sequence will also be used in the show itself as part of a dream Sam has following drug treatment, used in the present to try to bring him out of his coma.

The show's marketing, which includes blanket coverage of all media outlets, maintains the retro theme by using the 1970s' BBC branding. At the end of the campaign the Ford Cortina Mark III used in the show will be auctioned, and proceeds donated to Comic Relief.

Watch the unusual trailer at Digital Spy...

Life on Mars & Vincent win International EMMY Awards

Full list of International Emmy winners, here

2006 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® AWARD WINNERS:

DRAMA SERIES - Life on Mars
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR - Ray Winstone as Vincent

Life on Mars

Sadly the next series of 'Life on Mars' will be the last. The BBC Press Release confirms:

Fans will finally learn the truth about time-travelling DI Sam Tyler (John Simm) and how he came to be stuck in 1973.

"We decided that Sam's journey should have a finite lifespan and a clear-cut ending and we feel that we have now reached that point after two series; so, although it is sad that we have just finished filming Sam's final scenes, it's also been an incredibly exciting few days!" explains writer and co-creator Matthew Graham.

However some of the characters, though it's not clear if that includes those played by the two main leads, John Simm and Philip Glenister, will appear in 'Ashes to Ashes' a 1980s spin off - more Miami Vice than The Sweeney.