"Is it Gene Hunt? Is he kicking in a nonce?"
Oh my. This episode is devilishly clever, and may be my favourite yet, not only using the format to do fun things with the fourth wall (irresistible in a series with a premise like this), but to do creative things with structure too, and with unreliable narrators (and, in the case of Graham Bathurst's arrest, unreliable camera angles) all over the place. There's even a structural nod to Rashomon. I love it. And bloody hell, it's only by Matthew Graham, by whom I'd been rather unimpressed until now.
Of course, the Camberwick Green sequence is awesome and rightly adored, but it says a lot for the episode as a whole that it's not overshadowed by this. Sam has had an overdose in 2006 / spiked drink in 1973, and we have a trippiness to the whole episode, where things are not what they seem. Yet, on the other hand, the episode functions as a wonderfully structured and dramatic double whodunit that doesn’t cheat and is full of satisfying twists.
These two sides of the episode are brought nicely together by Sam coming into the case late, with an outsider’s perspective, and how everything hinges on another case from last year. This allows Sam to interview his colleagues and examine various angles on the case alongside us, the viewers.
Last episode gave us an aspect of the 70s- swinging- as theme; this episode gives us structural cleverness. Taken together, they’re exactly what Life on Mars should be doing. Superb telly.
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