Zippy and George are evil

And they made my flesh crawl as villains in the mind of a woman supposedly trapped in the past when Rainbow was at the height of its popularity.

The show was the sequel to the popular Life on Mars with a present-day cop in the world of 1981.

Keeley Hawes took over as the main role as DI Alex Drake. Her predecessor Sam Tyler was often mentioned but never seen

Most of the rest of the cast, including the gloriously un-pc Gene Hunt, reprised their roles.

The jury's out on whether Ashes to Ashes will be a good as Life on Mars.

But the nostalgia-fest helped with a tip of the hat to the A Team, Miami Vice, and other icons of 1981.

Zippy and George's contribution was to threaten time-trapped Alex that she would never see her daughter again.

Zippy was sneering and there was a lot of menace in the way George fluttered his eyelashes.
Honestly, there was.

I've never seen anyone have a breakdown over children's cartoon characters until I watched this programme and saw how Alex was intimidated.

It worked as a dramatic device - precisely because it was so unexpected given the place Rainbow holds in our hearts.

Rainbow was so cheesy that it became a cult despite itself with Bungle and pals never falling out.

It was innocent, (Sort of innocent, thinking about it, never did get a handle on the androgynous George.)

Now, however, they are the stuiff of nightmares. Maybe they did away with Mr Geoffrey and hid his body under a 1980s development.