Life On Mars

published: Thu, 12-Jun-2008   |   updated: Thu, 12-Jun-2008

Wow. Just wow. I'm blown away with how good Life on Mars has been. I finished the two series (on DVD) a month or so ago, watching the last two episodes in one marathon viewing. I haven't been so enthralled by a TV series in a long time.

Sam Tyler (John Simm) is a DCI in Greater Manchester in 2005 when he is hit by a car. He wakes up in 1973, unsure of whether he's in a coma dreaming of being in the past, whether his memories of 2005 are fantasy -- it seems in 1973 he's recovering from a car accident, or whether he's just going mad. We the audience are in the same boat: what the heck is going on? Playing on his iPod in his SUV when he's hit is Bowie's Life on Mars, when he wakes up it's playing on the 8-track in his Rover P6. He's a DI here, newly transferred to an older yet still familiar Manchester from Hyde (one of those very subtle jokes that the writers love to throw out there, with its allusions of Jekyll and Hyde).

Right away Sam is thrust into a world that is both unfamiliar and familiar and we are invited, along with Sam, to look at and compare our near past with the current future. This is the world of The Sweeney, of casual racism and sexism, of being most assuredly non-PC or politically correct.

Sam's new boss, in his new position, is DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). Gene, who refers to himself as the Gene Genie, another Bowie reference of course, is a copper carved from the same mold as Jack Regan, not afraid of using violence to justify the means to an end. Gene has a division of detectives under him (A division), including Ray Carling (Deam Andrews), Chris Skelton (Marshall Lancaster), and Annie Cartwright (Liz White). And there's Nelson (Tony Marshall), the black barman at the Railway Arms pub, who's taken on a fake Jamaican accent with some new age philosophy to help Sam get by.

Sam, as it happens, hears voices and hospital sounds when he's alone. He hears entreaties to him on the radio and TV from people he knows. He imagines visits from the test card girl (the color image that used to be broadcast by the BBC when television programmes had finished for the night) who admonishes him. He gets the idea that if only he could discover why he's been thrust into this (real? imagined?) world of 1973, he could get back to his own time and wake up from his coma.

As Sam journeys through 1973, trying to work out how to get home, there's crimes to be solved, bad guys to be caught. Sam brings ideas from 21st century policing to the raw world of A division, including taping interviews (often capturing Gene's punches to the suspect's jaw at the same time), using modern techniques in hostage situations, and properly investigating crime scenes. Conflicts of course arise as these methods clash with the more direct and instinctive methods employed by Gene and the others.

Nevertheless, Sam builds a rapport with Chris, the junior detective, and with Annie, confiding in her his situation, not that she believes it. And of course, he slowly gains mutual respect with Gene -- the best humor of the show comes from the growing friendship and admiration between the two men.

Each episode starts off with the set up of a traditional police procedural plot: we get a car chase (Gene's car is an oh so evocative tan K-reg Ford Cortina GXL that he throws around like a dodgem car), we get a dead body, we get a bomb threat. (Well, usually. Episode 2.5 starts with a most wicked and hilarious parody of Camberwick Green.) Then Sam notices that the crime being solved has some kind of direct connection to his past, that is, his past from his 2005 viewpoint. He meets himself as a child, his mother and father at the time (episode 1.8 is a great examination of why his father left his family when he was 5), he meets his 2005 girlfriend's mother when she's pregnant, and so on. Each episode usually has a resolution of the crime and of something in Sam's past.

For me, and let's get personal now, I loved the way I got sucked into 1973. The cars, the fashions (oh, yes, I used to have a paisley wide collar shirt or two), the music (even David Cassidy), the references to things long gone (Wimpy bars, anyone?), the subtle and not-so- subtle humor (for example, there's one scene of Sam and Gene standing side-by-side talking to the press and behind them is a "Keep Britain Tidy" poster with Morecambe and Wise). I also loved the way that the series quickly made me care about these characters. I wanted them to succeed, I wanted the team to remain together.

And so to me the last two episodes were an absolute roller coaster. We're introduced to Frank Morgan, a DCI from Hyde, brought in to replace Gene whilst he's being held on suspicion of murder. Morgan drops hints to Sam that he can go home once Gene is found guilty, taken away, dumped. Morgan even shows Sam evidence that he's lost his memory and really does belong in 1973,

Unfortunately for Morgan, Sam manages to clear Gene from the murder rap in the first episode of the two, but in the second, Gene decides that the only way to catch a cold-blooded killer is to put A division in the direct line of fire when he finds out a payroll train is going to be robbed. Sam is aghast and Morgan promises backup for him if he goes along with the mad plan and puts Gene in the frame.

Ray, Chris, Annie and Sam replace the train staff, the train is hijacked by the baddies, and right at the moment when all is going completely utterly wrong and the team are about to be shot (and Morgan breaks his promise of backup), Sam wakes up from his coma, back in the future.

For the viewer, this is quite the most awful switch. We're jerked from the hopelessness of the team's situation into the cold, antiseptic world of the hospital (the Hyde ward, no less) and the drab austere present day. We don't give a damn: we want to know about Gene, Ray, Chris and Annie. We want to know that they survive. We want the cavalry to ride over the hill. Was it all just a dream by Sam in a coma?

I won't reveal anything from this point on, but I can cay that throughout the 16 episodes over the two series, I was quite, quite engrossed and submerged into the world of policing in the 70s. I cared about all the main characters and wanted to know them better. Nonetheless I was extremely glad that the authors and producers limited the episodes to just two series and didn't prolong it way beyond when it should have finished (unlike Lost, say).

And I'll freely admit I had a huge lump in my throat and a stupid goofy smile on my face when everything was resolved. Which turned milliseconds later into a frisson of shock (and fear?) at the very final shot at the very end of the last episode. What the ...?

I've heard that ABC have bought the concept and are going to broadcast their version in the fall this year in the States. Just do me a favor, Guv, watch the originals.