© 2008 William Ahearn
Much to the dismay of my literary friends, I am unapologetic about loving a good crime story. While tales of sleuths and PIs no longer hold my attention, I can sit through hours and hours of good crime dramas. Even on TV. Well, maybe not TV in the US. Not anymore. And when I say TV, I mean that which will soon be remembered as broadcast. So I’ve yet to see “The Wire.” One can only hope that it’s better than “Monk” – which is pretty much Jessica Fletcher with phobias – and “Dexter” – which seems to be the cultural equivalent of the birth of a two-headed goat for the future of forensics shows on TV. When the serial killer with a sense of justice becomes some kind of superhero, I reach for the remote.
When a friend lent me the complete Brit TV series “Life on Mars,” I didn’t really have high hopes. There was mumblings about time travel and that sort of thing. Recently there have been all kinds of genre mixing with vampire PIs and werewolf volunteer fire departments and I find the results rather silly. Then again, there’s “Inspector Morse” and while it’s a tad stodgy it’s good and it was way better than “Frost” although some of the stories in the series made it interesting. “Prime Suspect” with Helen Mirren was one of the best TV crime shows that I ever saw. When I saw it available on DVD I bought it. That is something that I will watch again. Of course I went to the library and took out several of Lynda La Plante’s crime novels and bugger all what bosh. A round of ale for the writers of those shows.
Since I do most of my viewing and writing between freelance gigs, I popped the first episode of “Life on Mars” into my computer early one Saturday morning. After it finished, I disconnected the phone, made sure there was food in the house and watched the seven remaining hours of the first season in one sitting. The next day, I watched all of the second season.
Yes, it’s that good. It is the most creative, funniest, best-produced and directed TV police show I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. Not only that, the casting is so smart and the writing so crisp that the show seems to write itself as it unfolds. It is at times laugh out loud funny and at other times down and dirty. Usually in shows where there’s a hook (such as time travel or insanity), one or the other element suffers as backdrop. In “Life on Mars,” the show stays true to either realities or unrealities, as the case may be.
The story goes something like this: It’s 2006 and Sam Tyler (John Simm) has been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) and has been assigned to Manchester. When he gets to Manchester he’s struck by a car and when he wakes up it’s 1973 and he’s only a Detective Inspector. Tyler knows that he’s either in a coma, traveled through time or insane and he can’t seem to figure out which it is until he starts getting messages from phones, radios and his television set that no one else can hear. He’s betting on the coma angle and while he’s stuck in time he has to deal with some wild and wooly police work led by the seemingly unhinged DCI Gene “Genie” Hunt (Philip Glenister). Hunt is abetted by his Detective Constables, a motley lot that aren’t using the police techniques that Tyler takes for granted.
There are two things that endeared me to “Life on Mars” immediately. The first is that it doesn’t parody the 1970s in that Tyler doesn’t wake up in the middle of “Starsky and Hutch” or with avocado-colored appliances and an astrology symbol necklace and the comedy comes from legitimate cultural and political differences. The second is that the characters are as real as fantasies can be (if in fact they are). Gene Hunt is an over-the-top cop but he’s also a good policeman and nobody’s fool. And Annie Cartwright, the almost romantic interest played by Liz White, isn’t the typical over-pilated blond bombshell so often seen in US cop shows. She’s a working class girl from Manchester and becomes irresistible due to White’s understated innocence in her portrayal.
Having said all that I should point out that “Life on Mars” isn’t brilliant; it’s just really good. Even so, I can’t think of another TV show that I would devote 16 hours over two days to watch. It also has the best ending of a TV show since “The Prisoner.” (As for “The Prisoner,” see the first two and last two episodes. The rest doesn’t hold up at all.)
The advantage of having a time-limited series is that the temptation to “jump the shark,” as TV people call it, never arises. There aren’t unlikely marriages with the season-ending wedding ceremony or cute-as-a-button babies meant to inspire ratings being plopped into the mix. The worst that can be said about “Life on Mars” is that it was followed by “Ashes to Ashes,” a sequel of sorts where Tyler’s psychologist (Keeley Hawes as DI Alex Drake) is shot in the head and ends up with Gene Hunt and the boys in 1981. If anything “Ashes to Ashes” proves how fragile the balance of creative elements can be as it has, for the most part, the same cast and writers. What it didn’t have is the same directors but I don’t think that was the problem with the barely watchable sequel. Alex Drake is a shrill and unsympathetic character with few redeeming qualities. None of the stories had the same magic and the show seemed tired from the start.
“Life On Mars” and “Ashes to Ashes” are available on DVD.
“Life on Mars” will soon be on TV in the US. The ABC network just announced that David E. Kelly will remake the Brit series. Kelly also produced “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice” and “Boston Legal.” Why those folks don’t just show the original is beyond my meager understanding.