Monday
Apr062009
Couch Potato - Don't take it to ruin it
Monday, April 6, 2009 at 8:07PM 
A few years ago the BBC made an amazing show called Life on Mars, where Sam Tyler, a present day Police detective, has a car accident and ends up in a coma in 2006, but somehow finds himself working in the local Police Dept back in 1973. He has all his memories of his previous life and doesn't understand what has happened to him. Has he beamed back in time? Is it all in his head?
Through the series, he has to actually be a cop and solve crimes but, at the same time, strange things happen like people talking to him in his 2006 hospital room coming through on his 1973 TV.
The cops in 1973 are sexist bastards, have no computers, beat confessions out of people and don't have to talk to Internal Affairs every time they discharged their guns.
The crotchety Police Chief, Gene Hunt, has some pricesless lines:
"She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot"
"faker than a trannys fanny"
"He has more fingers in pies than a leper on a cookery course"
"This case is moving about as fast as a bunch of spastics in a magnet factory"
"Beer O'Clock!"
"Don't move you're surrounded by armed b*****ds"
"The evidence is about as hard as Liberace's d**k staring at a naked woman"
"I'm not a religious man Mr Warren - but isn't there something in the Bible that says, thou shalt not suck off rent boys?"
"Couldn't catch the clap in a French brothel"
It is an excellent series.
In the end, Sam falls in love with a female police woman, starts to enjoy life in 1973. When he finally comes out of his coma and returns to 2006, he finds himself in Police strategy reviews and other modern Police force corporate BS. He misses his friends, his girlfriend, his team in 1973. If you have been on his journey with him, you understand his dilemma. Sam chooses to go back and jumps off a roof. In committing suicide, he returns to this 1973 life.
It's very poignant.
US TV (ABC channel) bought the series.
We started watching it here but didn't like Harvey Keitel as the grouchy old Police Chief. He's too old for the role and the guy who plays the Chief in the series "Life" would have been perfect.
We did like that they seemed to be pretty faithful to the original script except, of course, for placing the series in New York. They also replaced a London bartender, a character who helps Sam Tyler, with a hippie dippie girl who lives in his building, which was a great way to translate a character that would be open-minded enough to understand Sam's dilemma.
We finally missed so many episodes that we stopped watching... until Fluffy Bear's friends told them how they chose to end the series in the US.
We just watched the last episode this evening.
The only thing I can imagine is that, because the series got cancelled, the writing staff sat down, smoked copious amounts of marijuana and brainstormed the most ridiculous ending they could.
The espisode starts with Sam's younger self getting abducted by his father from where he lives with his mother. Sam solves the case, saves his younger self, bla bla bla. Then he comes out of the coma. But he doesn't come back to 2008.
Nope.
Indulge me while I digress. Presumably, the show was called Life on Mars because it was a famous Bowie song in the 70s and because of the words of the chorus:
Sailors Fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
But I guess the writers' drug-induced brainstorming session took them in a more literal direction.
This is how the series ends:
Sam Tyler wakes up in an astronaut pod and he is on a mission to Mars. He has been asleep for over two years and a computer had him in a simulated dream, which he chose, where he was a cop in 2008. There was a glitch and somehow he ended up a cop in 1973 but with memories of his chosen dream of a life in 2008.
WTF?
Time to name and shame.
This episode was written by Scott Rosenberg, who should either flaggelate himself repeatedly while hanging his head in shame or go immediately into rehab without passing Begin and without collecting $200 - whatever will solve his very, very serious problem.
Reader Comments (3)
No. Wrong. I must disagree.
Life On Mars was one of those series I didn't see on TV. I find it too hard to commit to be in the same place at the same time for 8 weeks in a row, so often miss drama series. Thank goodness for lovefilm.com who also deliver TV series through the post. After all the hoo-ha I booked it and awaited the DVDs to come through my letter box.
I wasn't disappointed. I watched it and absolutely loved it. My iPod library swelled with 70s tracks downloaded after each episode. I enjoyed the banter, the storylines. I was interested to see how fucking drab Britain was back then and it was thrilling to experience a sort of culture shock by looking back to the recent past and seeing how far we had come. I could recognise that moment when he first walks into the grey smoke filled office with recollections of occasionally going into my Mum's old office. Places really were like that.
I wish though... Oh how I wish, that I had turned the final DVD off three minutes before the end, because for me Sam's suicide and desire to return to the 70s permanently killed the whole thing for me.
The conceit on the part of the writers that returning to the sexist, racist, homophobic and brutal policing of the 70s was the cosy cheerful and happy option is lazy and amoral. It is a conceit blown apart by another series aired in the UK recently called Red Riding. That examines much more carefully and unsparingly the link between corruption, brutality and crime, essentially proposing that the Yorkshire Ripper was as much a product of the West Yorkshire Police Force and their methods as anything else, while also looking at other infamous atrocities carried out by the WYPF.
For me therefore the US ending sounds better. A look into a past which you can view nostalgically and ironically, but which you discard as a place you are glad you have moved on from. Go ABC!
PS: In the UK version, Mars turned out to be an acronym, standing for the 'Metropolitan Accountability and Reconciliation Strategy'. This was the operation Sam Tyler was supposedly involved in to flush bad cops out of the system and he was apparently working undercover in Gene Hunt's department to garner enough evidence to have them sacked.
PPS: I'm still waiting on your comments on this years Eurovision entries :)
I love you, Everywhereventually, with a passion that is deep and true, not least of all because we can agree to disagree. Feedback on Eurovision is on my list... stay tuned!