Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 3

“You are surrounded by armed bastards!”

Perhaps this episode sees the series settling more to the point where we can talk about episodes of the week; there’s stuff about Sam losing the will to live in 2006, there’s even another appearance from the test card girl- does she represent the easy temptations of death?- but this time, despite the fact the factory killing takes place in what will one day be Sam’s flat, the focus is on the 1973 plot, not the meta-narrative.

Essentially this is a clever whodunit with a nice twist, set in an old-fashioned factory full of looms against a backdrop of the ongoing death of this kind of industry and the abyss that is about to open up in front of all these men, and their families, when it goes. Even six years before Thatcher the old-fashioned industries are dying and there’s a very hard transition into whatever comes next. There’s a fair bit of subtle social commentary here, too- on militant unions, on the cowed immigrant workforce.

But the episode is shaped, as ever, on the contest between Gene’s gut instincts (“first one to speak did it”) and Sam’s forensics, which this time we see in rather more detail and, in the end, successfully. Sam also seems to become more accepted within the team- not quite being on their level but offering something different and useful- and sharing with them all that most 1970’s of drinks, a Watney’s Party Seven.

Again, this isn’t necessarily Edge of Darkness, and perhaps it’s not quite so conceptually clever as it seemed in 2006, but this is solidly entertaining and quality telly.