Life on Mars
As part of the FourStarters relaunch we decided to broaden what we blog about, so here is a post that really has to be put in a new category to make sense on our blog.
I consume a lot of media. Books, music, news, internet radio, audio and video podcasts, movies, and most importantly: television series. I know that at least Reinier shares this interest in TV series with me (just ask him about Firefly and he won’t shut up) so I decided to give a write-up of one of the series that has kept me busy the last few weeks.
Life on Mars
Life on Mars is a 16 episode (2 seasons) BBC drama about Sam Tyler (played by John Simm), a Detective Chief Inspector for the Manchester Metropolitan Police, who has an accident and wakes up in 1973. The big question is if he is in a coma and dreaming it, if he is dead, or if he travelled through time.
Back in 1973 he joins the force as a detective inspector and finds that he has trouble fitting in. His boss, Gene Hunt (played by Philip Glenister) is an alcoholic, racist, sexist, homophobe that never learned to do an investigation by the book. This makes stuff very interesting for the viewer with Sam and Gene often either punching each other or co-punching another. Not to mention the weird hair cuts and cloths to add to the effect of the viewer wondering wether Sam really ended up on Mars.
What I personally like about this series is that it is only 16 episodes of ~52 minutes, while still feeling as a complete and finished story. I mean, the secret of any good ending is to both end the story properly while still leaving some things to fill in to the viewer. Most series fail on this and betray the viewer by either not finishing the story or making the end to weird, but Life On Mars is quite the contrary. It is not surprising therefore that a spinoff series “Ashes to Ashes” has been taken up and is now being aired on the BBC.
Both seasons of Life on Mars are now available on DVD and in the UK iTunes Store (sorry, no iTunes tv-series in The Netherlands yet). I expect “Ashes to Ashes” to become a similar success and will maybe do a write-up of that later this year. For now I end my review with this interesting and funny snippet of video from the series where Sam is having one of his hallucinations and imagines himself in a 70’s children tv show.
Tijs
March 22nd, 2008nice writeup, like that you guys started writing on something else than startups. Haven’t seen life on mars yet but I love ashes to ashes
Cristiano Betta http://cristianobetta.com/
March 22nd, 2008@tijs, tnx. You should really watch Life on Mars before Ashes to Ashes. Although I just watched the pilot of Ashes to Ashes and it is also very good.
alper http://www.alper.nl
March 22nd, 2008I don’t consume broadcast media anymore but I used to watch ‘Life on Mars’ at my previous house where we used to have a television back to back with ‘Spooks’ on Sunday evenings. Both of which are excellent shows.
Recently Dutch television has started its own version of Spooks with a secret above-the-law anti-terrorism unit located in the Hague: ‘Deadline’. It’s quite quaint and they get a lot of the computer stuff wrong, but still the proximity of the setting makes it interesting.
Kilian Valkhof http://kilianvalkhof.com/
March 27th, 2008Life on mars and Ashes to ashes are both indeed very cool series. I also love how the Beeb airs these without commercial breaks (though honestly, I usually just torrent them).
Nederland 2 is now re-airing life on mars after midnight on tuesday or thursday. They always seem to show the best series at the most unreal times.
Cristiano Betta http://cristianobetta.com/
March 27th, 2008@kilian The BBC airs everything without commercial breaks. That is why we pay £136 a year for a TV License
I normally torrent them too though, but I think I can soon start following Ashes to Ashes on the iPlayer (which honestly is brilliant).
Gerben
March 28th, 2008I LOVE life on mars! Excellent series.