Life on Mars...

I tried to hate this. I don't have enough time to get through all the shows I'm already hooked into without adding to the pile, but despite the new Battlestar 1 sat on my desktop we settled ourselves down last night to see what the Beeb had been spending our money on this time out. I almost gave up five minutes in. John Simm as Sam Tyler in 2006 was just awful - he looked like a 12 year old playing dress up in a suit that was a couple of sizes too big for him. The 'drama' was heavy handed, obvious and dull with some horrible supporting moments - Archie Panjabi was so wooden as to be flammable. But then Tyler gets himself run over and things immediately picked up. Half-watching the trailers over Christmas I had wondered how they were going to pull off the dilapidated seventies landscape, but someone had a brainwave and set the thing in the North. Genius. In fact they probably had to spruce up some of the locations to get them back to their 70's sheen 2. If you didn't see Life on Mars 3 you'll be a bit lost at this point. It's the new BBC frontrunner, a blend of sci-fi and police drama from the makers of Spooks (aka MI-5) and Hustle (aka 'Robert Vaughn is still alive?') both of which I've managed to avoid. This year I'm trying to sample a little more home grown product, slightly buoyed by the dizzy heights of The Thick of It and Waking the Dead 4. So Sam Tyler's girlfriend/colleague/moron gets herself caught by a serial killer who keeps his victim alive for 24 hours. At a loss at how to proceed Tyler takes a breather from his car and is promptly knocked into the middle of last week - 1973 to be precise. Cue lots of obvious gags ("I need my mobile..." "Mobile what?") and a couple of great ones ("There was a PC console here..." "PC who?"). As luck would have it the fates have decreed that Tyler is a copper no matter how wide his collars so before you can say Ford Granada he's on a case that mirrors the one back (forward?) in 2006. The plotting is a tad hokey, but the whole concept is more good dumb fun than simply dumb and what's INTERESTING is Tyler's reaction to what has happened. Me? I'd be on the first plane to New York to catch The Getaway on a big screen, but Tyler sticks around and tries to get a handle on things. It's a well trodden path to pop someone from an earlier age into ours and play fish out of water (Time After Time being the best example as Malcolm McDowell's HG Wells chases David Warner's Jack the Ripper around seventies San Francisco) or to drop a protagonist further back where his or her knowledge of the future helps a lot, but relatively recent time travel is much more interesting. I guess that's what Quantum Leap was all about as that Sam could only jump around within his own lifetime - overall that show hedged its bets and handled even the most important issues very lightly because of the format. There's some room here for the BBC to do something a lot more interesting, but we'll see how that goes... At first Tyler is simply out of his depth and pretty much a dead ringer for Martin Freeman's Arthur Dent in the recent big budget Hitchhiker's Guide, but when he begins to interact with his new colleagues things get much better. Liz White as WPC Annie Cartright is great and although she simply believes that Tyler is suffering from a concussion she's his rock in an increasingly unsettling world as she does her best to get him to come to terms with the 'reality' of where he is 5. The real star of the thing though is Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt, Tyler's new boss. That Tyler is so shocked and bewildered by Hunt's methods and behaviour just means he's never seen an episode of The Sweeney (the main touchstone for this program). I'm keen to watch Tyler try and hang onto his 21st century sensibilities while everyone around him gets the job done while eating over the evidence, slapping people around and drinking six pints before lunchtime. By the end of the first episode Tyler has already done one wrong thing for what he believes is the right reason so to see how he navigates that slippery slope should be part of the arc of the next seven episodes. I hope. Early on Tyler is reminded that he used to rely on his instincts more and he replies that that was before things got so complicated that you could get yourself sued for harassment so easily. During the 2006 interrogation scene the suspect has a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker present in direct contrast to the '70's sequence. Back then a female witness is intimidated (and perhaps worse) in a Lost & Found office with no representation at all. And that seems to be what the series is really about. Tyler has a very understandable superiority complex, but I 'm guessing that that will slowly give way to a grudging respect as he comes to realise that these Neanderthals get the job done without technology or the complications of red tape. Of course the danger there is how much you can respect someone who is a good copper, but also a racist, sexist homophobe. It's an interesting problem and I'll keep watching just to see them dance around the issues. Guessing ahead and as Tyler was three in '73 there's also a good chance for him to run into family and perhaps his toddler self - let's pray it's handled better than the Who episode 'Father's Day'. The time crossed love interests could also take us into dreary Goodnight Sweetheart territory but let's hope not. I think we're supposed to be hooked on the mystery of what exactly has happened to our hero - he himself asks aloud whether he's there to change something and later Annie points out that maybe he's here for a reason, but to hell with that. The whole reason to stay glued to the first episode (and I suspect the best part for the actors and writers) was to build up to the scene where Tyler and Hunt vault the desk at the same time on their way to rescue the girl. It was a BIG STUPID MOMENT and it made the show. Jess and I both laughed out loud and it's the best bit of TV I've seen so far this year. I have no idea what kind of legs the show has got but as everyone (in the UK at least) seems to love cop shows it could run for a while. The concept does walk a thin line between great and terrible, but bravo to the Beeb for giving it a go. With BBC2's Hyperdrive on the horizon, ITV giving us Patrick Stewart in Eleventh Hour (I wonder if he gets to "see everything" in that) and the face-lifted dinosaur of Doctor Who complete with its ominous lump Hot Rod Cow Torchwood, at the very least I'll have plenty to mouth off about over the next few months. Life on Mars was very British though. Be interesting to see what the Yanks make of it... 1 I still haven't decided if it's better to shorten it to 'Battlestar' or 'Galactica' yet. What are the hip kids calling it? Is it ok to refer to both the old and new versions as the Bee Gees? 2 Like Doctor Who I expect a lot of this was filmed in Wales as it's a BBC Wales production - they�ve dodged the problem of having to make a backwater look like the capital by playing to the strengths of Wales and the North being crap-pits. Torchwood in contrast is actually SET in Cardiff. Be interesting to see a high tech team investigate alien artifacts in a locale where the inhabitants have yet to master the can opener 3 The title comes from the David Bowie track playing on Tyler's iPod just before he hits 1973. The same song is playing on his 8-track when he 'arrives'. Nice 4 The last season of Waking the Dead funnily enough had a great episode partly set in the seventies 5 The character of Annie's ex boyfriend is much more clumsily handled and seems shoehorned in. That particular revelation would have been better handled over a couple of episodes. But I like the unintentional horror that suggests that every coma victim could be running around the North of England wearing a kipper tie. Pull those feeding tubes NOW [Music: Zappa]