We here in the U.S. of A. are always looking for inventive British TV series to ruin. (And occasionally to not ruin.) Well here’s a prime candidate: Life on Mars, which is not your average time-traveling cop-in-a-coma police procedural.
The BBC drama thrusts Sam (John Simm, at left), a present-day police detective — and classic Labour liberal — back in time to 1973, via what may or may not be a deep-coma hallucination. (Listening to Bowie’s ”Life on Mars” on his iPod, he’s suddenly hit by a car; waking up, it’s playing on the radio) He’s probably dreaming, sure, but he’s still a cop, and he’s still got his contemporary scruples, which don’t go down well with his new chain-smoking, head-cracking ’70s cop colleagues. On an episode-by-episode basis, the show is a police procedural, pitting Sam’s progressive honor code and modern forensics savvy against the results-first, questions-later brutality of Chief Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister, at right), a British version of Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle. But really, the show is a commentary on our present-day retro obsessions: Why do we play at preferring the past to the present, in everything from fashion to movies to "street justice"? Where did we go wrong? Or right? Why are David Bowie and the Who so much better than anything currently on the radio?
Aside from the fact that American TV probably can’t conceive of a progressive cop (our cop dramas, if not our police procedurals, really are still living in the ’70s), I can’t see anything preventing this from jumping the pond with ease. In the leads, I see Serenity’s Nathan Fillion as Sam, and maybe Ian McShane as DCI Hunt. Who’s with me? Anybody? I smell a petition. One that has a much better chance of succeeding than my admittedly underconceived Are You Being Served? The Next Generation pitch.
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I watched this show in the UK, and it’s great from start to finish. I agree that, like The Office, it could work wonderfully by making it as much about life in 70s America as this does with 70s Manchester. The brilliance is that the audience used to CSI, Law and Order, et al, know exactly what modern police would do next but none of those methods or tests are available, making you wonder what exactly people did before computers were everywhere. With the right creative team, this could be a great UK to US transfer.
Hello?! We’ve known since May that the US remake is underway, with David E Kelley at the helm. http://imdb.com/title/tt0787490/
We are loving this show. My husband being a huge fan of the whole Starsky-and-Hutch-Streets-of-San-Francisco-French-Connection era stuff, and I love the subtle hints they drop that shows Sam must be in a coma (Suddenly a heartbeat monitor starts echoing in the distance…).
I do wonder if Sam will ever get a legitmate swing at Hunt. He’ll deserve to!
News of the remake came out in MARCH. Way to catch on PopWatch! http://asseenonmytv.blogspot.com/2006/03/space-case.html
I’d love to see Nathan Fillion in anything
or in nothing at all . . .
They meant a remake by someone who isn’t a completely incompetent hack.
Scott, when I was reading your article, I found myself thinking that maybe Carrie Brandshaw might be at the other end of the keyboard:
Why do we play at preferring the past to the present, in everything from fashion to movies to “street justice”? Where did we go wrong? Or right?
I’ll end the caption: I couldn’t help but wonder – Are bellbottoms the new bootcut?
Meanwhile downtown, Samantha was getting her own “bell bottomed”.
This feels like a Cross between Due South and Quantam Leap. Due South while to me was a great show, did not do well with a U.S. audience.
Wow, it sounds like a really interesting concept to me! Hope it stays on air long enough over here to mean anything!
Those Brits send us junk and keep the good stuff for themselves. While the Brits sent us all the Monty Python we could shake a stick at (Monty Python for the brits is like Bacardi in Puerto Rico; Strictly for tourists), they kept hidden such gems as “are you being served” “Black adder”, “Mr. Bean” and “the Young Ones” really hard to get released in the US.
More recently they sent us “The Office”, but keep “Spaced” all locked up and hidden. THEN, these bad teeth having, lambretta scooter riding, football stadium rioting fish and chip eaters send us over the ” just okay” Dr. Who and keep the “totally awesome” Life on Mars all hard to find.
Man, we saved these folks from Germany (twice) and all we got in return was Roger Moore. And why has the pound been so strong against the dollar over the last 30 years anyway?
Scott, is there a petition to have Sci Fi Channel bring the series home to the US of A? I love British TV and want to have more of it made available on our screens.
Are you Being Served? I’d love to see that come about – I watch it every afternoon on BBCAmerica…I need to catch Life on Mars to see what its all about, but its getting good reveiws, which means some Hollywood idiot with too much money will probaly ruin it…blech…
That’s not true. I have a copy of the Young Ones, and you can get it at Best Buy. The other BBC stuff like Peep Show, Black Adder,and Chef!, can be purchased on Amazon or Deep Discount DVD.
BTW: Rik Mayall was friggin hilarious on The Young Ones. It just makes you wonder if he was high when he agreed to do Drop Dead Fred.
Am I the only one who thinks the original series is just dandy, and wonders why the hell we need an American remake? You can catch it on BBC America Monday nights (by the way, “Spaced” is being run on BBC America as well, so it’s not exactly “locked up and hidden”. I love British TV precisely because it is British TV; “The Office” is a lucky exception that has benefited from the early involvement of its original creators before it managed to catch its own very funny groove. But most recent Brit-to-America remakes have been underwhelming at best, horrible at worst. There are just things you can get away with on Brit TV that would never fly here, and the attempt would only neuter the wit and grit of their source material. Case in point, ABC’s cringe-inducing attempt at an Americanized “Cracker” with the late Robert Pastorelli. Please, leave these great shows alone and expand BBC America into more homes so that more people have an opportunity to catch some of the best comedies and mysteries on the air (oh, and if you missed Series 1 of “Bodies” on BBC America last season, check it out on DVD. Puts American medical dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” and ER to shame!)
I saw the first episode of Life on Mars last week and it was good. I’m looking forward to the rest of it. I’m not looking forward to the American version if David E. Kelley is still behind it. Can you imagine the man behind Ally McBeal, Boston Public and The Practice writing and producing this show? You’d have whimsical hallucinations like dancing babies in no time. The only thing I can give him credit for is being married to Michelle Pfeiffer.
I love Life on Mars, it’s a great idea well done. I have very little hope for a successful Americanised version, it seems like the kind of show that doesn’t translate well.
If it does catch on, they will no doubt run it into the ground like that do every other import from Who Wants to be a Millionare to Queer as Folk. One great thing about the BBC approach is that they make a few episodes, have a start, finish and end, and then move on…then they might come back a year or two later and do a few more episodes. That approach keeps the series fresh by not overexposing it and keeps the viewers fresh by constantly having new, different things to watch. We, on the other hand, run shows into the ground (Friends, Fraiser, Star Trek, 7th Heaven, all should have ended years before they did).
American version should feature a black detective. They could use Shaft movies and some great old funk soul music for reference.
This is a brilliant show, I am admittedly biased, being British. Why do US TV execs think they can remake perfectly good British shows, they usually mess it up. Re Men Behaving Badly, Coupling etc, the original British versions are very good. Usually a Brit TV season is 6 or 8 episodes (not 26), then you might make 6 or 8 more a year later, it seems to make the show better quality. Watch BBC America, they have lots of great telly.
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