ORBzine - Life on Mars TV Review
With the success of the return of Doctor Who , the HBO team-up Rome and the experimental comedy Hyperdrive , the Beeb has also brought out this time travel drama. A Detective Inspector from an English police service in 2005 is in a serious accident. He wakes up in the year 1973! Luckily he arranges to be transferred into the 1973 Police Service. The unit he ends up in is a cliched remake of The Sweeny. Partnered with a neanderthal, he must solve a series of murders. This is part cop show, part fish-out-of-water comedy. Disappointing, perhaps. But no worse as a cop/time travel show than Crime Traveller .
The detectives arrest a suspect in a series of ARVs. They have nothing on him, so the 70s cop beats him up and plants evidence on him. However, Y2K cop decides to let the suspect go. In the next ARV a supporting character is coincidentally hospitalised. The girl from the BBC test-card appears to him in a nightmare. And at the end, we get a hint about how the time travel took place. The music used is Live and Let Die , which as well as being a great tune was also released in 1973.
A man is found hacked to death in a spinning-mill. The DCI's main suspect is the local Union rep. Meanwhile, it turns out that the Regional Crime Squad, the most senior detective unit in the local Police force, are even more crooked than the local CID. . .
The CID are in cahoots with the local gangster. He's an old-fashioned 1960s gangster, the kind that we only see in cliched detective stories. The hero goes all honest cop, refusing to accept gratuities. Then he meets a damsel in distress. Things follow very predictably from there, I'm afraid. The hero is so modern that he cooks exotic mexican meals [where he gets jalopenos from is anyone's guess] rather than open a can of baked beans. Real cops in 2005 would get their Mexican food in a microwaveable packet! However, he is more than willing to compromise his ethics when he feels like it. Torturing suspects [for inadmissable statements!] is only part of it. He even gets everyone to bet on a horse he knows will win the race. He hears his mother's voice talking to him via a sock-puppet on TV. Naturally he tracks down his family in 1973, and pays the a visit. Creepy bastard!
A car chase on a football pitch is followed by a murder case. The victim is suspected of being murdered by supporters of a rival team. The protagonist's memories of going to the game with his dad are mirrored by his encounters with the victim's son. The police work, including undercover work as pub staff and a riot-squad punch-up, is all perfectly cliched and predictable. However, this is really a drama. The core is the protagonist's life. .
The hero's mum phones him to say that he's being taken off life-support at 2pm. Just then, he is told that a local newspaper office is scene to an armed siege. The hostage-taker intends to kill someone ... at 2pm! The DCI and his friends act like gun-toting thugs. But when it comes down to it, they're extremely reluctant to shoot. Convenient for the plot. But then, since it's all a halucination in the mind of a coma patient, who cares? . .
In the penultimate ep, the protagonist realises the doctors are testing him for response to stimuli. Unfortunately he's unable to respond. A drug dealer is left in the custody of the thug cop while the protagonist and his boss pop out for a curry. When they come back, he's dead. The protagonist goes on a witch-hunt to find out what happened. Fact is, the entire department are thugs. It's pointless pinning all the blame on one scapegoat. .
The CID investigate a new bunch of gangsters who are trying to take over the Manchester underworld. Unfortunately, the trail leads to the protagonist's dad! The protagonist relives events from his childhood, in scenes reminiscent of 12 Monkeys . Shockingly, he ignores all the evidence, both physical and remembered. Yes, he makes the psychotic DCI look like a smart, well-adjusted person in contrast! . . |
Life on Mars
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