Life on Mars: Season 2, Episode 1

 "Now hands that do dishes can be soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid..."

Aargh. There's a lot I should in theory be liking about this episode, but I can't help feeling there's just a little too much clunkiness, a little too much artifice in the dialogue, a little too much... well, Matthew Graham.

The concept is sound- a killer in 2006 trying to torture Sam turns out to be the main suspect in 1973, with the narrative making it quite clear he's the killer; no whodunit here. Rather cleverly, we spend the first half of the episode seeing another police culture clash, with Sam insisting on by the book methods as opposed to Gene, with the new Superintendent (who must be significant as he's played by Kevin McNally) siding with Sam. But halfway through, as Sam gets desperate- for Tony Crane's future wife as well as himself- the roles are swiftly reversed as it's Sam who tries to fit up Crane while Gene is operating by the book.

This feels a little out of character, and the resolution is unsatisfying- just when Sam seems about to be rumbled for corruption the script cops out and suddenly has Crane trying to kill both Sam and Gene. It feels forced. So does the scene where Crane "outs" sam as being mad for thinking he's from the future, only for the tables to be turned and crane to be put into a mental institution, just like that. It's utterly ridiculous, and a shame, as the concept behind the episode is good.

We end with Annie joining the CID, while Sam received a mysterious phone call, from "Hyde 2612", about a secret mission in 1973. Intriguing, and pointing to future episodes which, I hope, are much betterthan this one.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 8

 "You make that sound like a bad thing..."

This is, of course, a superb and hard-hitting season finale, resolving the mystery of what happened to Sam's father. It's also, interestingly, an episode that eschews the usual commentary on social mores and between 1973 and 2006 in favour of what we Doctor Who fans call timey-wimeyness. It's a superb character piece, a pretty good whodunit with a twist, and a good bit of, yes, time travel science fiction.

John Simm is superb as Sam slowly unravels the truth about why his dad walked out on his family at a family wedding in 1973. Sam's wilful refusal to see Vic as anything other than a good bloke helps to cleverly misdirect us from the fact that Vic himself is the big bad, who commits two murders under our noses.

Also clever is that we learn the reason for the hallucination of the woods, which we've seen all series- it's Vic kicking Annie in a repressed childhood memory- would she have been killed without Sam there? And is his dad why Sam has gone back to 1973 in particular?

I think it's also becoming clear- especially following last episode- that Gene Hunt is a more nuanced and (whisper it) character behind the hard nut facade, like many a Western hero. He even forgives Sam for pulling a gun on him, but he clearly likes and respects Sam more than he will ever admit. 

This is an exeptional end to a fine first season. I've been alternating Life on Mars with The Crown, and will continue to do so, but I'll blog something short and very current over just a few days before I see you again for Series Two...

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 7

 "I left a weak man in charge..."

I saw this episode on its original broadcast but, as this was several months before Torchwood debuted, I had no idea who Chris Chibnall was- not the case the following season, where I distinctly recall discussing his episode of Life on Mars in the pub-so it's a surprise to see his name on the credits. This is interesting, because this episode is superb, certainly the finest so far. Chibnall may be a divisive figure in Doctor Who fandom, but he's certainly good at writing serious drama on the evidence of this, whatever you may thing of his family-oriented science fantasy.

There's a simple concept here- a death in the cells, for which everyone on the team bears some degree of responsibility. This simple premise leads to a wonderfully layered and complex script in which every character gets some development but John Simm really gets o shine as the white-hat wearing Sam. The end- where, after much agonising, Sam hands the tape to the superintendent who simply destroys it and covers up the whole thing- is a powerful reminder of how things were in 1973. 

It's nice, too, how the initial rush towards a cover-up by Gene is later shown to have been something more nuanced. And at least Ray faces some kind of consequence for his actions. Inevitably, we have to finish the episode with a reset button- Ray's demotion notwithstanding- but the fact this works without looking like a massive cop out shows us just how good this script is.

More Chibnall please. On the evidence of this he's better than the showrunners.

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 5

 "What if me uncle had tits? Would he be me auntie?"

This episode is all about football, and the romanticisation of its fandom in the era before hooliganism, which we see emerging here. It says a lot about this episode that, since the 2010 World Cup, I’ve had zero interest in football, but this episode had me gripped.

Again, the weirdness and time travel isn’t foregrounded here except as a means to examine 1973 from a modern perspective, although the Test Card Girl again has a nice little cameo. And again we see Sam bond further with Gene and the rest of the gang who aren’t Ray. We seem to have almost hit on a formula where Sam, with his methodical approach, has a theory and Gene has his own more old-school approach, and there’s a jovial rivalry between them until Sam is proved right. It works well, especially as the episode works very well indeed as a whodunit.

Sam finally gets the caution right when arresting someone- at last. Someone gets arrested for cattle rustling. And it is, of course, fun to see the gang running a pub, although I’m reminded very much of why I try to avoid football pubs even today. 

The final angry speech Sam makes to the killer, who thinks football is all about violence (“You know nothing about football!”) is superb, and his relationship with the sin of the murdered man is a nice touch, as are the scenes of City and United fans walking to the match together. It’s a nicely crafted hour of telly even if, again, a little less deep and mysterious these days than it was at the time

Life on Mars: Season 1, Episode 4

“Others have tried to wear the white hat. And all have failed."

This is a frustrating episode- a well-crafted, well-acted hour of telly that examines, rather successfully, the ethics of police taking bribes and allowing Kray-like big men to hold sway over a community in return for an orderly neighbourhood. And yet there's one big, fatal flaw that stops me from saying this is the best episode so far and, indeed, leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth.

The use of Sam's mother- in both time zones- and the peek into his childhood is a very nice touch here. Again, the weirdness, and the mystery of what's going on, is kept in the background and mainly part of an involuntary LSD trip. The Test Card Girl only gets a brief appearance. And I love the '70s pop culture nods, with Marc Bolan and a very '70s club.

There's some nice character development, as Sam and Annie are established as platonic while Gene begins to develop a little more respect for Sam as the reason for bringing down Stephen Warren; the "I thought you's never ask" conversation is well done, almost working as sleight of hand to hide the suddenness of Gene's conversion. Sam's essential white knight nature is established, a kind of Mancunian Philip Marlowe who always acts with integrity in a bad world, even if he needs loads of alcohol to do it.

It's all very neatly plotted, with the situation being established, the honey trap, the murder of Joni, and the resolution, all focused on Sam's ethical beliefs. The script does a good job of allowing Gene to be just complicit enough but decent enough to redeem himself; the bit of his backstoty we hear is a very nice touch, even if the stream of homophobic epithets he uses to describe Warren, even if meant to contrast then and now, probably wouldn't fly in 2020 as easily as in 2006. The whole episode is admirably done. Except for one thing.

Joni rapes Sam.

At no point does the script (or perormances) accept that this is what happens, yet she literally drugs him and has sex with him after he's explicitly told her he doesn't consent. The fact that she's a woman and he's a man are irrelevant. It's rape, so it's uncomfortable to see it played for laughs, or Annie blaming him. Of course, this all takes place in a wider context of deep misogyny, and Joni probably has little choice here, indirectly being sexually abused by Warren. But she rapes him, and there's nothing feminist whatsoever in acting as though any person can't rape any other person.

The way the script completely fails to acknowledge that Sam has been raped leaves a very nasty scar on what would otherwise have been an excellent episode. It's a shame.

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.

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.