is Keeley Hawes - or Alex Drake, the character she plays - incredibly annoying.

The series ended in a very unsatisfactory way; keen to followup with another series.

Definitely not Life On Mars.

I haven't watched the last episode yet, so I can't comment on the ending.

However, the show has been far inferior to Life on Mars, firstly John Simm and Liz White were not in this series. In Simm's case, it was by choice, but the character of Annie Cartwright was not mentioned at all, both characters have been sorely missed.

Secondly, Keeley Hawes is very annoying in the show and how are you supposed to care about her, when you have no sympathy for the character. In Sam Tyler's case, I really cared about his journey and how tormented his character was.

Apart from that, the series did have it's moments, Gene Hunt needed a male countepart to have a bit of physical banter with as his character was a bit one-dimensial. Chris, Ray and Shaz were fine as support actors, but they missed Annie badly.

Still 6.6 million on average watched the series, which for 2008 is a sure-fire hit, so I will look forward to the next series albelt with a little less enthusiasm.

It has already been confirmed that they will decide if what current characters will be retained and if any will be introduced or re-introduced. So I would guess that despite the ratings hit, the production company are looking at changes, so they can't be 100%happy. If it was me, I would bring back John Simm and Liz White. The latter character could be a WPC transferring from Manchester as Sam Tyler's widow, and Sam makes a re-appearance halfway through the series. Not sure if I would retain Shaz though.

by general standards it isn't a bad idea but the expression "flogging a dead horse" springs to mind. "Life on Mars" worked but it finished, so to try and drag it on again and have it seem believable is stretching the imagination of the great British Public.