Life on Mars

Tonight was a fifth Wednesday meeting of the Society of the Rusting TARDIS, so in addition to one of the brand new Doctor Who episodes (just aired on Saturday in the UK!), we watched a show called 'Life on Mars'.

The premise of 'Life on Mars' is that a detective inspector from today, Sam Tyler, gets hit by a car just after his girlfriend and coworker gets taken by a killer on the loose. When he wakes up, he is fine except for the fact that he's now in 1973, and the same killer is at large. He's still a cop, albeit now with shoes that would make Liberace proud, so he is able to catch the killer by the end of the first episode.

But is he in 1973, or in a coma, or just simply mad? Now and then he hears the sounds of the hospital--the respirator, voices talking about his prognosis. Other times, he has bad dreams that blur the lines of reality even more. We know that catching the killer didn't change anything for Sam, but that's about all we can be sure of.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether it is real, it is what he is stuck with and he needs to work with what he's got. And much of what makes the show so compelling is to see him adjust to what he doesn't have anymore, which highlights how far we've come in the last 33 years. 1973 is a long way away from anything politically correct, and while I often think the PC movement has gone to far, watching this show is a brilliant reminder of how far the pendulum was swung the other way. All the women in the police force are in lowly roles and are sexually harassed on a continuous basis. The cops threaten, intimidate, and frequently punch anyone who might offer any help in solving the case at hand. Sam's superior hits Sam regularly enough that it made me wonder if men miss hitting folks these days. The forensics that we all know so well from modern television shows are largely non-existent; for instance, a fingerprint check takes 2 weeks. There are no computers (the desks are instead piled with paper), no mobile phones, and no one stops the superior from lighting up in a hospital room where the patient is on life support!

It is an interesting, if somewhat terrifying (especially given the clothes), thought to wonder what it would be like to wake up in 1973. Something I feel I'll be pondering over the next few days.

David E. Kelly is apparently working on doing an American version of this. I'm a fan of 'Ally McBeal' and 'Boston Legal' but I'm not sure the quirky characters that make those shows so interesting will work for this. But then, maybe the literally hard hitting superior cop is quirky enough as is.