Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 7

 "I appear to have killed a man..."

The penultimate episode; we're close to the end, and it's interesting to see where they're going. The character of Frank Morgan- Gene's hopefully temporary replacement from "Hyde" with a name evoking The Wizard of Oz- is initially suspicious in his apparent desire to ruin hunt, but in the end he privately holds out to Sam the hope of getting "home". Ooh.

But all that metatextual telefantasy stuff is for the finale; this penultimate episode again focuses on a plotline that can only be done once: Gene Hunt being a suspect for murder. And it's very well done indeed, both as a whodunit and as an exploration of the bond between Sam and Gene. As Gene says, "Just be the picky pain in the arse you normally are and I should be fine." It's good to see the effects on Ray and Chris of the Guv being a suspect, but the whole will-they-won't-they romance between Sam and Annie has been strung along with so little consistency from episode to episode that their almost-kiss means very little.

It's all very clever, plot-wise, with twist and turns to keep you guessing, and a satisfying conclusion. There's surprisingly little of the usual '70s versus '00s culture clash stuff, but I suppose the premise doesn't really lend itself to that. Still, as we approach the end, I'm still of the view that Life on Mars succeeds more because of the great premise, the production and the performances, and that the scripts- while frequently good whodunits- are not really first rate stuff. But let's see how it all ends...