January mini-reviews: The Tree of Seasons, Galaxy Quest, Pride

I took a trip to nearby Ryde a couple of weeks ago to explore the big bookshop there, and spent a good hour browsing all the rooms and nooks (and being plunged into darkness at one point when the electricians didn't see me hiding in a corner.) I'm sure I've written about Ryde bookshop before. The front part houses the new books, and then you go through a door to the labyrinth behind: three stories of second-hand books: genre fiction and travel at the back, general fiction lining the halls and stairways, and several rooms for children's books and non-fiction of every genre imaginable. I always feel that you can get lost in "L-Space" in a shop like that, take a wrong turning and you might end up in another bookshop in another town. After much deliberation, I bought A Place Called Winter new, and a couple of science fiction novels. 

On the way back to the bus stop, I wandered into a charity shop where I found myself confronted with another name from my childhood: my first celebrity crush, Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, with whom I was embarrassingly besotted during my early teens (don't judge me!) Although I hadn't thought of him for years, it still came as a shock in the autumn of 2009 when Stephen died at the age of just 33. (You might remember  that marking another landmark in the "how low can they go" history of the rag known as the Daily Mail when they published a really hateful article insinuating that instead of suffering the hitherto unknown heart condition diagnosed by the coronors, Stephen basically Died Of Gay.) Anyway, he was writing a children's book at the time - I read somewhere that he was very much against the use of ghostwriters, although the book was ultimately finished off for him from his notes and probably edited a lot - and it was this book, The Tree of Seasons, which I found in the Cancer Research shop on a 2 for £1 deal.

The Tree of Seasons is a rather charming fairy tale, evoking the feeling of endless summer found in Enid Blyton, Narnia, The Hounds of the Morrigan and others. Three siblings, Josh, Michael and Beth Lotts, go exploring in the forbidden woods behind their great-aunt's house, and find within a tree a portal to four magical kingdoms, each controlling a season of the year. But all is not as it should be; the ruler of the autumn kingdom has been overthrown by an evil witch whose influence is spreading out into the world beyond. It is up to the Lotts children to stop her. The plot is a fairly conventional story of the genre, a McGuffin-hunt, with good and evil characters, peril and unlikely friendship. But the world-building is immersive, atmospheric and poetic, the book a joyful celebration of nature. 

On the subject of famous people I like dying, 2015 was a notorious year, with the loss of Leonard Nimoy, Sir Terry Pratchett, Sir Christopher Lee and the actor who played "Gilbert Blythe," Jonathan Crombie. We're only at the end of January but already 2016 is almost matching last year, adding David Bowie and Alan Rickman to that list within about three days of each other, and yesterday I woke up to the news of TV and radio personality Terry Wogan's death as well, all three from cancer. My local radio station has been playing even more Bowie songs than usual, and of course that week I rewatched one of my favourite films from my teens, Labyrinth. It was harder to choose just one of Rickman's films to remember him by: Harry Potter or Robin Hood? Die Hard or Sense and Sensibility? But I went with Galaxy Quest, the affectionate Star Trek spoof described by George Takei as "a chillingly realistic documentary," in which a once-great sci-fi cast, who relive (or endlessly suffer through) their glory days on the convention circuit, get mistaken for real-life space heroes by a race of aliens in desperate need of help. Rickman's performance as the self-loathing thespian (who is never without his alien prosthetic headgear) is a thing of beauty, the film is gloriously quotable, poking fun at all that is ridiculous about the likes of Star Trek, while also celebrating what has made it endure for half a century. As an  honorary entry in the Trek canon, I'd rank it second only to The Wrath of Khan (tied with The One With The Whales.)

After Ellie emailed me to tell me she'd bought and watched one of my more recent favourite films, Pride, I got so excited about her discovering it for the first time that I needed to rewatch it again. And again (twice in two nights.) I could quite easily reach the end and go straight back to the beginning yet again, if I didn't stop myself. It's quite rare for me to find a film so good I don't want it to end; no matter how good a movie might be, normally once it's passed the 90 minute mark I tend to find my attention wandering a little until the climax. Pride is one of those British comedies about unlikely people achieving big things against all the odds, like Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. It's set during the miners' strike of 1984-1985, and based on true events, when a group of gay men and women from London pledge their support for a Welsh mining community. Strong friendships are built between these two very different groups of people. The script is spot-on, uplifting, with a ready wit, and acted by a stellar cast of big names, such as Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy and Paddy Considine and relative newcomers like Ben Schnetzer, George MacKay and Faye Marsay. It is an absolute joy to spend a couple of hours in the company of these warm-hearted characters.* We see them grow and change as we become acquainted with them, from activist Mark Ashton, to still-closeted young Joe ("Bromley") to Bill Nighy's character Cliff, on first appearances a rather uncomfortable, stern gentleman but who, we come to discover, has a poetic soul, a deep abiding passion for the coal that is at the heart of his homeland, and secrets he's held for decades. Imelda Staunton as matriarch Hefina is magnificent (she must surely banish any thoughts of Professor Umbridge in this role.) Andrew Scott, who you might know as the gleefully evil Moriarty from the BBC's Sherlock, shows a contrasting subtlety in his portrayal of gentle bookseller Gethin, while Dominic West plays Gethin's partner Jonathan, a flamboyant but not cliched actor with secret battles of his own. The film ends with captions of "What happened next," a bittersweet mixture of sadness and triumph, and one simple sentence about Jonathan is particularly sweet.

Pride was an instant addition to my top films of all time; it is perhaps as close as you can get to the perfect film. It tackles difficult subjects with an illusion of ease, is by turns moving, inspiring, and hilarious. You'll laugh, you'll cry tears of sadness but more of joy and mirth. The ultimate feel-good film. Oh dear, I might have to go and watch it again.

*because, although many are based on real people, some of whom were interviewed in the extras and extraordinarily well cast, by nature of being written into a drama, they are characters nonetheless.) 

Tell The Wolves I'm Home - Carol Rifka Brunt

Sometimes you only have to pick up a book to know it's going to be something special. I'd never heard of Carol Rifka Brunt's novel Tell The Wolves I'm Home when I found it at work the other day, and yet I knew before I even read the cover blurb that it had the potential to be a good friend. Maybe it's the wistful dreaminess of the title, or the striking, bright green cover design. I prefer to think that it was some kind of magic inside the book itself, calling out to me, knowing that it had found a kindred spirit.

I returned to look at this book several times while working in the bookshop, and when I found a shiny new copy in the library a few days later, I knew it was meant to be. Tell The Wolves I'm Home is the story of an introverted teenage girl, June, dealing with the death of her uncle Finn, who was her closest friend and confidant, from AIDS. Through her grief, she strikes up an unlikely secret friendship with Toby, Finn's partner, and gets to know her uncle better through Toby's memories. 

Tell The Wolves is a story about love and loss, but also of finding, growing up, death and life, loneliness and jealousy, but at its heart, it is a tale of family. The book brings the reader into June's family, and gradually, although the primary relationship is between June and Finn - both living and dead - it becomes clear that the bond between June and her sister Greta is as important, or, I would argue, even more so. The sisters were close as children, but in their teenage years have grown apart. Greta appears at first as that familiar figure, the mean elder sister; the grumpy, rebellious teenager who can't help but pick on her shyer younger sister. But the reader comes to realise, long before June does, that Greta is lonely too. Greta starts off as a background figure in the novel, which is how June sees her; while she is so preoccupied with the absence of Finn, she misses the sister who is right beside her, trying in a clumsy way to reach out to her. June and Greta echo the fragile and fractured relationship between Finn and their mother Danni, who was his sister. Once close, they had let secrets, jealousy and resentment come between them, never to be fully resolved. 

Finn was once a famous artist, but one who disappeared from public life some time ago. His final work is a portrait of June and Greta, which is the object at the centre of the novel. The painting lives on as Finn's legacy, and is added to by all those who loved the artist most, becoming a collaborative work containing parts of each of them. Tell The Wolves I'm Home demonstrates how each person's life touches many others, how we are formed by the relationships we make and the people we meet. After Finn's death, June discovers that many of his quirks and traits had originated from Toby, and in turn, she sees much of Finn in Toby. Perhaps because of this, I found it a bit difficult to view Toby and Finn as separate characters, and wondered whether June was looking for a substitute Finn in her new friendship with Toby, an issue that is addressed in the novel.

June is a thoughtful girl and mature for her age, so it would come as a bit of a shock whenever I was reminded that after all, she is still very young. Fourteen is a strange age when one is part child, part adult, and sometimes the two parts don't sit well together at all. The busyness of June's parents make it easier for her to take the train from the suburbs into New York City without their knowledge, and a couple of times I wondered why the secrecy? Surely it would be better to discuss Toby, Finn and all the unresolved issues between the families as adults, though they may have to get through some unpleasantness first? And then I remembered that they aren't all adults. I remembered how powerless you are at fourteen. If adults say no, they won't discuss something, then you can't make them. They can stop you seeing someone, going somewhere, doing anything. Finn (and later Toby) was the exception in treating June as an equal.

Tell The Wolves I'm Home touched me close to the heart. June reminded me of myself as a teenager - shy and always an outsider, though I think that despite her quietness she had more confidence in herself as a person than I did at her age. The story, too, reminded me of the stories I would write in my teens - which is not in itself a recommendation, as I was inclined towards the sentimental and the morbid. Carol Rifka Brunt avoids crossing the line into sentimentality with her lyrical prose and strong characters and relationships. Tell The Wolves I'm Home is a very beautiful, very human story, and I closed the book with reluctance. The best new book I've read this year so far. I will be buying my own copy of this book, and it will take its place on my "favourites" shelf.

If you enjoyed this, you might like:

When God was a Rabbit - Sarah Winman
A Place of Secrets - Rachel Hore
Paper Towns - John Green

Eve Green - Susan Fletcher
The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan

TV: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988)

They don't make kids' TV like they used to. Fact.

The Lion...

As a child, I watched very little television indeed, but perhaps that made the programmes and dramas I did watch all the more special. In particular, I have a soft spot for the old Sunday night dramas the BBC used to show in the run-up to Christmas: six-part adaptations of classic children's literature. The Phoenix and the Carpet was one, and The Borrowers ran to two series, which remained buried deep enough in my subconscious that on my first viewing of Lord of the Rings, many years later, I saw Ian Holm's Bilbo Baggins and my brain screamed "IT'S POD!" But no drama can live up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I would have been just about three, and almost certainly this would have been my first encounter with the story, but I have no memories of seeing it for the first time. I've just always known that story.

In later years, we had a taped-off-the-TV video of an animated adaptation, which now I think is... not very good. Back then, I viewed it as fair, but not "the real thing." My grandmother was the custodian of the (mostly) live-action mini-series, and to watch this was a rare treat. As far as I was concerned, this was the book come to life off the page.



The music of the opening titles is the closest thing I've found in the real world to magic, and it brings tears to my eyes. It evokes the reality of magic, and the knowledge that if I went into my wardrobe, maybe I would find my way into Narnia. Or, alternatively, I could stick pictures to the back of the wardrobe, imagine myself there, and it would be just as real, just as good. There was none of the wistfulness of knowing that the real world just isn't as exciting as the world of the imagination, because as far as my younger self was concerned, they were the same thing.

...The Witch...

Of course, in 2005, Walt Disney Pictures brought out their Hollywood film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I have no complaint with their treatment of my beloved story. (The sequels left a fair bit to be desired, but I can count even teeny, minor criticisms of L, W & W on my thumbs.)

The BBC mini-series is very much a product of its time, with theatrical over-acting and a quaint combination of costumes and animation for special effects. We've got a dwarf with a broad Yorkshire accent, beavers who resemble lisping potatoes, and an Aslan who, if he opens his mouth wide enough, reveals a man inside a lion suit. And yet, all this fades away, leaving the storytelling to do the work. Watching it now, I was pleasantly surprised how well it stood the test of time in an age of 3D, CGI and Blu-ray, proving that above everything else, what is needed is a good story. The casting is wonderful - I love the hammy White Witch, plummy-voiced, blinky older brother Peter, the freckled and resentful Edmund, Susanish Susan and round, toothy Lucy.

...and the Wardrobe

The BBC also adapted three other Narnia books: Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which were put together as a six-parter, and The Silver Chair. I saw The Silver Chair, which features Doctor Who's Tom Baker as a marvellous Puddleglum, while still a child, and once again I found it was close to perfect, but I was older and more critical of the Prince Caspian/Dawn Treader adaptation - it was a bit rushed and I thought Caspian really ought not to have such childish curls - but even so, with its limited budget and dated special effects, I feel that it captured the essence of the original stories better than its more cinematic Hollywood remakes.

Diamond Star Halo, Tiffany Murray

On my last visit to Foyle's bookshop on Charing Cross Road, I was determined to find something brand-new. A book I hadn't seen in high street shops, that jumped off the shelves and shouted "buy me!" An impulse buy. After all, there's no point making a trek all the way up to London to buy something I could have got from my workplace. On my previous visit I discovered Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver - I didn't buy it then, but I was immediately drawn to it and knew I'd like it. Then, last month, it was Diamond Star Halo.

Halo, or to give her full name, Diamond Star Halo Llewellyn, lives at an old farm that is now used as a recording studio. When she is about five years old a band called Tequila arrive; eight golden-haired, bearded brothers and Jenny, the sixteen-year-old wife of the lead singer. When a tragedy occurs, Tequila leave behind them Jenny and Abraham's baby son, Fred. The years go by and as a teenager Halo realises she is in love with Fred - but although they are not related by blood, he might as well be her brother. At seventeen Fred follows in his parents' footsteps and becomes a rock star, while the family faces further sorrow.

Diamond Star Halo is a quirky novel about family, rock'n'roll and Crazy Love. The narrative feels slightly skewed, with everything seen through rock'n'roll and myth-tinted glasses. Important family events are muddled up with big events of musical history, such as Elvis's death. Halo is named after a line in a T.Rex song. The Llewellyns, especially Nana Lew, tell colourful and improbable versions of the family history that leave you wondering what is real and what is a fabrication - rather like the stories of Edward Bloom in Big Fish. For example, the official story is that Halo's mum was born in a dressing-table drawer (placed there by her birth mother, an unwed hotel maid, during the Blitz, and found by her adoptive mother.) Halo, everybody says, was literally born to be a drummer. The narration becomes a little strange when Halo, the narrator, speaks in such great detail about the ghosts of her three great-uncles killed in the First World War, that I didn't know where the line was to be drawn. Are we expected to believe in the literal existance of these ghosts, or is her imagination working overtime? In the end, it doesn't really matter.

I found myself reminded of Mari Strachan's The Earth Hums in B Flat, another Welsh novel, with a child narrator who presents the world as she understands it, with truth and imagination blurred, and sometimes misunderstanding what is really going on.

I found some aspects of Halo a little uncomfortable to read. Fred is too nearly her brother for their relationship with each other not to feel wrong and a bit squeam-inducing. Characters are sexually precocious, behaving like adults while young teenagers, and teenagers when pre-teen. Conversely Halo's narration seemed to be that of a younger child until she was sixteen. Perhaps for this reason, I found the timeline a little difficult to follow, especially around the teenage section. Although Part II is subtitled 1988 (when Halo is 16) there are flashbacks to a few years previously, and I found it ambiguous whether the flashback covered a single scene or a longer passage, if the narrative hopped back a few years before hopping forward again, or shuffling gradually through the 1980s towards the "present" time.

Overall I give Halo 3 and a half stars. For personal engagement with the story, I give three - perhaps there were just too many quirks to the Llewellyn family to make them quite real - but I award an extra half star for the work's literary merits, as it is a well-written, original and intelligent novel.

Play/Film: The History Boys

I first encountered Alan Bennett's The History Boys in its playscript format as one of my set texts at university. It was brand new at the time, being performed at the National Theatre, although I was never fortunate enough to see it. It was soon afterwards adapted into a film, starring the original cast. I found it interesting to compare the screen production with the version that played out in my head. Usually I am disappointed with how someone else visualises a story that I’ve imagined vividly for myself, however, The History Boys was a notable exception. An excellent cast, both of the schoolboys and staff, breathe life into the characters and make the story more complex than it was on paper. Of course, The History Boys, as I was always told when studying Shakespeare, was not written to be read and studied, but performed.

The play follows a group of grammar school students who, after receiving their A-Levels, return to school for a final term for extra lessons to prepare them for Oxbridge entrance exams. Their most influential staff are old-fashioned teacher Hector who values knowledge for the sake of knowledge, whose General Studies lessons are informative but often irrelevant (such as a wonderful scene, conducted entirely in French, when the boys enact a scene in a brothel, only to change rapidly when the headmaster walks in.) Also we are introduced to new teacher Irwin, whose job is to prepare them for the exams and show them how to turn out original, controversial, unexpected answers, a new interpretation on history.

The eight boys are each well-rounded characters, but the chief boys are sad-eyed Posner whose inner turmoil and crush on the cocky star of the class, Dakin. Though a more minor character, special mention has to go to Rudge, the (comparative) thicky of the class who is more interested in sport than academic achievement and who is only trying out for Oxbridge because it is expected of him. Rudge is played wonderfully by Russell Tovey, otherwise known as George the werewolf in Being Human, and who is currently, and deservedly, popping up on pretty much any TV show you care to mention.

The History Boys is a witty, fun play/film that nonetheless has a rather uncomfortable undercurrent, in particular in the feelings it evokes towards Hector. On the one hand, he is a teacher of the old school (if you’ll excuse the pun) with a passion for learning whose methods are being discounted in favour of league tables and impressing examiners with what they want to hear and never mind the truth. On the other hand, out of school, he crosses a definite line with his pupils in a way that makes it difficult to reconcile condemnation with sympathy, though the boys themselves treat it all as rather a joke. Despite the darker subplots, I found The History Boys to be, overall, a feel-good film about education, aspiration and growing up.

…Until right at the end, where the mood takes a jarring turn. Twice. In the stage play, there are “framing” scenes that seem out of place at the time, but set up the ending. The film does not have any of these scenes, which I was glad about because I didn’t feel when reading the play that they added anything. Yet their absence makes for a more shocking ending. Firstly, there is a shock twist to the story proper, and secondly, there is a sort of epilogue which is at the best bittersweet and at the worst depressing. I didn’t find this made the film any the worse, but if I had not read the play I would not have liked it. Certainly the makes you think and wonder why Bennett chose to end it this way. I haven’t yet come up with an answer to that question.

TV: Ashes to Ashes (series 3, contains spoilers.)

Series three is where Ashes to Ashes really gets weird. At the end of the Series two finale, Alex is shot in 1982 and wakes from her coma in 2008... only to find Gene Hunt talking to her through her TV screen. Up until this point, it seemed fairly straight-forward. Even if in some respects the time-travel was real, it is a parallel reality reached through being in a coma. But if Alex is in a coma in the coma-world, just what is real?

In this final season, it is not only time-traveller Alex who would have strange hallucinations and experiences, but also Ray, Chris and Shaz. Each saw stars in the sky "as if they were standing on the edge of the world." Also, each had a significant character-defining episode in the series, where they faced challenges, and overcame them and proved themselves worthy coppers. And when this happened, the screen went dark, they heard a couple of seconds of the song "Life on Mars," and laughter, voices, the sound of a pub. Not just any pub, but the Railway Arms, that gang's hangout back in the Manchester days.

For the first two series of Ashes to Ashes, I found Alex Drake an immensely irritating character, unable to get past her idea of the world existing only to serve her purposes. In series three, she has mellowed and is more likeable - but perhaps that is because there is an even more annoying character: Jim Keats. (Daniel Mays.) Keats is an officer from the Discipline and Complaints department, investigating Gene Hunt's department and spreading discord throughout his team. He brings up the subject of Sam Tyler's (1979) death and tries to persuade Alex that Gene Hunt had a hand in it.

When series three was being shown on TV, but before I had caught up and was avoiding it, I couldn't help hearing my family and friends discussing the character of Jim as a character designed to question what we thought we knew of Gene Hunt. However, there was no such ambiguity. I could never take seriously the suggestion that Gene was a murderer - or even that he was less than the morally-dubious-but-ultimately-good person we'd come to know. Especially not coming from such a character as Jim Keats, who was just plain creepy. Just watching him smarm around, making pronouncements and insinuations with his rubbery, sneery mouth and unsubtly trying to persuade Gene's team to come and join him, made me want to take a long shower.

I started to have my theories about Keats' identity when he made sure that he was present when two police officers died: first a one-episoder, then a supporting member of the team from the beginning. In the first death scene, he was creepy, but seemed that he was at least trying to be comforting. The second was frankly terrifying. The dying policeman was obviously in pain and distress, and Keats did nothing but held his head still, and waited. Was he some kind of Grim Reaper, I wondered? Or worse? And then it was pointed out that both officers failed.

In the grand finale, when all is revealed, I both had an inkling of where the story was going, and simultaneously had to do mental gymnastics to keep up. It seems that everyone was dead: Alex died from her gunshot wound, Ray, Chris and Shaz all were killed at various points in time before ending up in this world, which must be some kind of purgatory. And Gene Hunt. Not only is Gene dead, but he died as a very young policeman in 1953, and has been here ever since as a guardian angel sort of figure, training up his team until they are ready to "move on." (Oh, and in this world Heaven is a pub!) Jim Keats, his nemesis, is revealed to be either the Devil himself, or one of his minions.

When I was watching Ashes to Ashes, I had wondered if "the answers" to the series' mysteries were hinted at by the titles: Life on Mars showed Sam Tyler finding his life's meaning in a strange world, and Ashes to Ashes, from the funeral service, had an awful lot of death themes in it. However, I dismissed the idea that it was actually set in the afterlife, because the epic series Lost had its conclusion on the same weekend, and revealed to have that same explanation. Actually, Ashes to Ashes aired first, but I insisted on being told nothing about it. I wasn't a fan of Lost, but my sister had told me enough to keep me curious.

My first reaction to the great revelation was "Where did that come from?" But after a few moments' contemplation, I realised I wasn't disappointed, because the clues had been woven in from the start, if I knew to look for them. However, I would be interested to watch the whole five seasons of two series with that extra knowledge of what was going on, and see how it changes my understanding of the story.

TV: Ashes to Ashes (series 1-2)

Let's fire up the Quattro.

After the phenomenon that was Life on Mars, it was not too surprising that Gene Hunt would appear on our screens once more, in another Bowie-song-titled series. This time it is 1981 and the much-loved anti-hero and his team have been transferred down to London. The series has undergone a glamorous makeover and now we land at the beginning of the New Romantic movement. The new titles blare with squealy guitars, and of course Hunt has a shiny new car: the iconic Audi Quattro.

One member of the Life on Mars team is notably absent: protagonist Sam Tyler ended the series 2 finale by committing suicide, sending himself (temporarily) back to 1973 where he felt he belonged. Time moves differently there, and he spent six happy years in the seventies before his fate caught up with him. This time it is police psychiatrist  psychologist Alex Drake in the fish-out-of-water role. Back in the 2000s, Alex had been investigating Tyler's death, and therefore when she arrives in 1981, she has a little background knowledge of DCI Hunt, DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton. Seeing that, as far as Alex is concerned, they and their world were dreamed up by a comatose Sam Tyler, and considering that her last memory was of being shot in the head, it is not unreasonable for her to assume that she too is unconscious and dreaming. Unfortunately for her, Hunt, Carling, Skelton and newcomer Sharon "Shaz" Granger won't accept their roles as sidekicks in her story, and object to this newcomer strutting around as if she is the only person who matters - or even really exists.

Introducing a strong-willed female counterpart to Sam Tyler - and one whose first 1980s outfit is that of a prostitute - adds a new angle to the love-hate relationship between old and new methods, and of course between the characters themselves. As far as Gene is concerned, Alex "Bolly-Knickers" is a posh, smug - but strangely sexy - know-it-all, and Alex considers Gene a misogynistic neanderthal (but ditto the strangely attractive factor.) 

In Ashes to Ashes we get to see deeper sides to the characters introduced in Life on Mars. Ray Carling, (Dean Andrews,) who was not portrayed wholly sympathetically in the original series, softens in his attitudes, showing more respect to Alex than he did to Sam. The moment where I found myself warming to him was in the third episode when he is awkwardly compassionate towards a young woman taking refuge in the police station. Chris Skelton (Marshall Lancaster) has matured from the nervous and rather dim youngster he was in Life on Mars and is in a romantic relationship with the rather lovely Shaz Granger (Montserrat Lombard.)

As in Life on Mars, while Alex tries to get used to her new life in the '80s, surreal happenings keep imposing on her, cementing her belief that she is in a coma and dreaming. As well as seeing her daughter Molly in a time before Molly even existed, every so often the clown from David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes music video turns up taunting her, like the Test Card girl in Life on Mars. She also has to deal with meeting her parents, who died when Alex was a little girl. In 1981. The first series deals with Alex trying so desperately to change her past and prevent the bomb from exploding and killing her family. But alas, as we saw in Life on Mars, it seems that you just can't change your own history.

Or so it would seem. In series two, Alex meets another time traveller from the early twenty first century. The plot around Martin Summers challenges everything you think you know about the rules of time travel in this story's world, when he does something that really, really screws up his own timeline.