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.