Ashes to Ashes

[annavere]

Spoke too soon. The last six episodes of Ashes to Ashes turned things around completely, to the extent of rewriting everything about the show in the best possible way - making all of the procedural filler I was just complaining about into essential material, and taking all of the secondary characters and giving them meaningful character arcs. The final episode in particular managed the impressive feat of explaining just the right amount of the weirdness that the show has specialized in (including a bit of lampshade hanging on certain consequence-free actions that have occurred since Life on Mars), while leaving all the rest for the audience to piece together. Really and truly, I couldn't be more pleased with how the whole five seasons were wrapped up.

I have only one quibble, which is how the chief villain of the piece came unglued and started chewing the scenery like a maniacal toddler. It reminded me of Moriarty on Sherlock and John Simm's Master on Doctor Who, and I find those types of villains cartoonish and annoying. In the previous episodes, he'd been chillingly low-key and a more convincing threat because of it.