Ashes To Ashes - Episode 6

Phil Davis guest stars in this week’s Ashes to Ashes as aging bank robber Chas Cale, who met Gene Hunt 10 years previously, in Manchester. He got away then and now he has retried to run a restaurant in London with his wife. Gene doesn’t believe him, as he is investigating a local post office, which was robbed with all the hallmarks of a Chas Cale job.

Meanwhile Alex is feeling unwell. Her visions of ‘The Clown of Death’ don’t help much and she believes she is going to die. So her goodbye to Caroline Price seemed very uncomfortable, well to me anyway!

It turns out that Cale is too ill to do any kind of robbery, so the team are back at square one as Gene and Alex continue their slanging matches. Alex even steals Gene’s car to steal Cale’s rubbish bags for evidence! In fact Gene’s feeling ‘past it’ and goes to Luigi’s for a ‘quiet drink’, well nothing’s ever quiet in Luigi’s! The owner constantly badgers Gene to go upstairs and see Alex because ‘it’s not right that there’re both alone’. Gene eventually does and as they are having a few drinks, Chris and Ray, who are ‘undercover’ in a pub, contact Gene to tell him they may have nicked one of the bikers who robbed the post office.

We learn that the biker is looking after his nephew and when his alibi checks out, the team are nowhere again. That is until the biker turns up dead and the murder is witnessed by the young lad.

We find out that it was indeed Chas Cale who did the robbery along with the murdered man but it was his wife that was pulling the strings and she hired an hit man. Still, it looks bleak for Alex, as she is taken, tied up and shoved in a freezer, for the hit man to come and collect. But it’s Gene who comes to the rescue and after the most epic scene of ‘shooting a glass door’ I have ever seen, he gets Alex out of freezer and revives her!

It was another very good episode but I always feel uncomfortable watching the scenes between Alex and her mother. I don’t know if they are designed to be like that and it’s no criticism of the actors but I just squirm when Alex cries in front of her! It also seems the Gene-Alex love thing is on, after Gene drew a naughty picture of him, ahem, ‘doing’ Alex! She didn’t see it but Ray, Chris and Shaz did! Whoops!

8/10

Next Week – Gene finally does us a favour and kicks smarmy Evan’s head in!