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Life on Mars

LIFE ON MARS: The Complete Series DVD Review

by Charles A. Coulombe Posted: October 31st, 2009 at 8:20 am

I long ago realized that my loving a series usually means that it’s doomed. The magic worked again with last season’s Life on Mars. It was, to my way of thinking, one of the best and most intelligent shows on TV at that time. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the series was set — sort of — in 1973. An American version of a BBC hit, the series chronicled the adventures of New York police detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara), who having survived a car accident in 2008, somehow woke up over thirty years before. Each week, Tyler’s “enlightened” views on police and societal affairs were pitted against the “archaic” mores of his fellow cops, especially Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel). Sam’s only ally is Policewoman Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol).

But that was only one motif. In with and under his struggles with the past, and attempts to solve crimes without the technology he was used to in the present, Tyler also was forced to try to figure out how he had arrived in the past, and whether he was really there at all. Each episode veered in the direction of one or another explanation: that he really was back in time; that he was actually in a coma; that he had died in the accident, and was in some sort of strange Purgatory; and on and on. Moreover, 2008 had an odd way of bleeding back to him, via radio broadcasts, newspapers, and the occasional odd character. More after the jump: