Return to Mars

IS THERE MORE LIFE ON MARS? MATTHEW GRAHAM GIVES US THE INSIDE WORD ON THE TIME-WARPING COP SHOW’S POTENTIAL RETURN

- NICK SETCHFIELD

“I’ve got this idea for the poster,” says Matthew Graham, co-creator of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes. “It’d just be this massive wall of cardboard boxes, with the Cortina and the Quattro side by side, both smashing through the boxes at the same time!”

Are we mad, in a coma or back in time? None of the above. Graham really is plotting the return of Gene Hunt, mashing the worlds of Mars and Ashes together in a brand new, Brut-splashed bastard of a series. ’Oops are most definitely back on the menu.

“We decided to tell people on Twitter when we were doing these Life On Mars tweet-a- longs,” he tells SFX, perfectly willing to grass himself up. “We haven’t even gone to the BBC yet. I think we’ve caught them out slightly – I think some journalists phoned them up and said, ‘When are you making the new Life On Mars?’ and they went, ‘What? Did we miss a meeting?’” he laughs. “Hopefully they’ll like what we bring them. I really hope we get the chance to do it. I think we’ve got one more last hurrah left in the old boy.” One more punch in the old pair of driving gloves…? “And the mother of all cardboard box walls!”

This news came as a real surprise. Are you equally surprised to be doing it?

It came as a surprise to me when I suddenly found myself getting in touch with [cocreators] Ashley Pharoah and Tony Jordan and saying, “I’ve got an idea for a Mars.” We’d been kind of banging it around for years. After A