Tag: <span>life on mars</span>

* I wrote this November of 2008, and just found my draft of it. I published it on Mayor Sam, and even convinced readers there to take it for a ride! Too late to see it now, of course – it was brutally murdered by ABC a few months ago- oh, and the incompetent and inconsistent writers, let’s not forget them. But my hopes were high when I wrote this, so let’s love the ones we’re with. Me, I think I’ll try the U.K version, which everyone claims is so much better, anyway.

Remember when you were little, and your parents got ready to go out to a glamourous party, and you suspected (rightly) that they were just excited to not think about you for a few hours? The smell of your mother’s good perfume was everywhere, and you hated the new babysitter because she was a nobody. So your parents learned to try to distract you with other fun things for the evening.

Photo of Jason O’Mara from TV Guide.

That has nothing at all to do with tonight, of course, but just in case you have decided to skip the Bloggers Party, and you think a bevy of bloggers sounds like it might be on somebody’s hit list anyway, you might want to check out?Life on Mars on ABC at 10 tonight.

I love this show so much I’ve watched each episode at least twice (this will be the 3rd episode.) Sam Tyler is a NYC policeman, and got hit by a car a few minutes into the first episode. He woke up a few minutes late in 1973. Still NYC, but different, in a warm glow, with less cars and more dirt. Not the Twin Towers, however; they are newly built, still gleaming in the sun.

Anyway, I wrote about the TV series Life on Mars at Mayor Sam last fall, because I loved the concept so, so much. (Those ABC bastards don’t even have shows up to link to anymore!!) Briefly, a cop gets hit by a car in the present, and wakes up still a cop, still in NYC, in 1973, and spends the rest of the series trying to figure out if he’s in a coma, dead, time travel, etc. The episodes were filmed with a yellow glow, and include some great groovy scenes of hippies, old cars and attitudes, and even the Twin Towers (in the first episode only. Why, did the CGI cost too much?) Also lots of 70’s tunes, of course. I’m not into music at all, but a lot of people liked that the most.

The actor is a quite hunky, 40ish Irish guy who never let his accent slip once. Harvey Keitel – well, I’ve liked him better in other things. I really liked Gretchen Moll, and grew to like her more. The Sopranos guy with a stache overacted.

But I want to be clear that Life on Mars didn’t die a peaceful death. ABC killed it, with ugly knife wounds all over the place. They were GIVEN the premise, and a lot of the episode plots, from the very successful UK series of the same name (which has a spinoff). ABC HAD the setup, the familiar audience, the interest, the timing, the characters, even some of the dialogue from the England show. The cast changed, of course, and the one big change, and quite an improvement, was just moving the show from England to NYC. So why couldn’t they keep it alive???