Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 1

"I need my mobile."

"Your mobile what?"

I thought, given the recent news about a new series, that I may as well just marathon Life on Mars- which I saw on the telly when it was broadcast- and Ashes to Ashes, of which I've only seen the first episode.

It's an impressive first episode, every bit as good as I remembered, and nicely establishng the show's central conceit- DCI Sam Tyler finds himself hit by a car and either in a coma or back in 1973- while introducing a load of compelling characters and, no easy feat, getting us to like them. John Simm and Philip Glenister are both superb from the beginning, in very different parts. It's amusing, given that the show relies heavily on the contrast betwee the present day of 2006 and the past of three decades earlier, that the last fourteen years have really dated the 2006 sequences- the eponymous Bowie track is playing on an iPod.

I think, though, that while the characters are well-drawn and the script is highly quotable, we are perhaps stretchng credulity a little as DCI Hunt and the rest of the 1973 gang give a little too much credence and leeway to this nutter claiming to be from the future. But there's enough sleight of hand to get away with it, and it's all nicely smoothed over with truly phenomenal, auteur-like direction from Bharat Nalluri. He really shines here, and is arguably as much of an authorial voice as the writer Matthew Graham. The dreamlike sequence where Sam first wakes up in 1973, and the panorama round the 1973 street, stand out in particular as brilliantly done, but the camerawork is masterly throughout.

Overall it's a superb conceit with plenty of potential- the casual sexism and pre-1984 policing methods are very much highlighted here in setting up the ongoing comedy of manners but, interestingly, Gene Hunt is allowed to end the episode with a moral victory on behalf of the old school methods. Perhaps it remains to be seen how the series fares with a less amazing director, and part of me suspects this is more of a pop culture 1973 than a real 1973 (surely we'd see more internal decor from the late '60s, for example?), but perhaps that's not necessarily a flaw.

Fourteen years on it's clear that this isn't quite up there with the very best telly, but there's nothing wrong with that. Life on Mars is big, brash and fun. I'm sure I'll enjoy it again this time round.