Mars in the USA
I’m too lazy to have bought or rented the BBC series Life on Mars, about a present-tense cop finding himself time-transported back to 1973. But it has a relatively good rep. Which is why an American version of this series will debut on ABC on 10.9 with Jason O’Mara as the time-traveller and Harvey Keitel as his older, grizzled partner.
If you research it, indications pile up that the ABC version may turn out to be on the trite or mediocre side.
One, jokes about the differences between the two time periods appear to be on the level of the same type of material in the first Back to the Future, and this kind of thing can get old very quickly.
Two, TV.com reports that O’Mara’s character “ends up working on a case involving a serial killer that may have something to do with his girlfriend’s kidnapping in the present time,” and there’s a line in the ABC promo reel in which a female colleague says to O’Mara that “maybe you’re here for a reason” — kiss of death!
And three, David E. Kelley wrote and executive produced the Life on Mars pilot, and yet the N.Y. Times has reported that Kelley “has handed over the production responsibilities to others.” Wikipedia reports that ABC ordered an overhaul in which the “unsatisfying” ambiguity of Sam’s story was removed in favor of a “mythological element” and “deeper mystery”. In other words, it’s probably been downgraded or dumbed-down.
Also I don’t think HUNKY DORY era Bowie was popular enough in this country for the title to make sense to most people. And I love Harvey Keitel, but he is not Gene Hunt.
The original show i’s pretty awesome in parts, especially if you lived through the 70s. The first version of the US pilot was horrible, no surprise they reshot it with a new cast, although they could have changed the lead too.
As a big fan of the original series, I can’t even bring myself to find out how they’re gonna fuck this up.
I’ve been watching UK series and miniseries devotedly for almost 40 yrs, and LIFE ON MARS is one of the ten best I’ve seen primarily because of the outstanding work of stars John Simm and Philip Glenister. The premise is gimmicky, and everything depends on the right touch. Don’t see this happening with the US version.
I saw the whole original series it was really interesting. I wonder why these guys even bother remaking a series if they don’t want to follow the original’s format. It as purposefully ambiguous as to why he was there or if it was even real. The dude who played the lead isn’t tall or traditionally good looking but he’s smart and has honor and all of that will be stripped from him in the US version.
1973! That’s crazy, man! Does he have to learn to ride a horse? To start a fire with two sticks? How does he check his email?
On the plus side, it will help fill the Seventies nostalgia gap. Lord knows, there’s been a shortage.
Am a fan of the original series, one of those few great shows that has a definite beginning, middle and end. Not sure how that will work in the more open-ended US version which, if successful, has to sustain the premise for a much longer run…
Which is the bigger sticking point; the BBC version was a grand total of 16 episodes. End. Finis. Over. The tale of Sam Tyler is very limited and doesn’t really lend itself to a prolonged run without significant padding. Even as good as the show was, it still ran a bit long for the premise. The characters (and terrific actors) really sustained it more than the overarching narrative.
I won’t even count the follow-up series ASHES TO ASHES, which lacks all of the cracking disorientation of LIFE ON MARS, and admittedly far more dull setting of the 1980s. The biggest flaw being the protagonist’s self-awareness of her dilemma – a horrible hook for the premise. Better to have just left it THE GENE HUNT SHOW, and jumped off from there and had fun.
I saw the initial Kelley pilot, and it was a bit of a mess. Hit all the wrong notes. Part of the charm of the BBC version was the aping of shows like “Z Cars” and “The Sweeney” in style and content, with a contemporary spin on old formats. The equivalent on this side of the pond would be to emulate “Starsky and Hutch”, “Kojak” or “Hawaii Five-0″; not nearly as good a pedigree to draw from. They would have to follow the mold of DIRTY HARRY more to get the required grittiness down. And setting it in LA was a colossal mistake; why didn’t Kelley set it in his beloved Boston? The civic and racial tensions of the day would have been a terrific backdrop for the show, but would no doubt made the network executives nervous.
Most damning of all is that Jason O’Mara is no John Simm. O’Mara is not awful, but he generic cookie-cutter Hollywood stud-muffin (and kinda blad at that), and not the wiry/edgy/borderline-suicidal sensibility that Simm brought to the Tyler role. O’Mara plays desperate as if he can’t find the next page of the script, not out of any sense of organic despair. Hopefully, the newer version will have stronger direction and maybe he can rise to the part.
Another big problem with the Kelley version was that a number of the supporting characters were cut out in the adaptation. LIFE ON MARS is an ensemble show (well, with the exception of the Gene Hunt character, who is a “bull in china shop” cartoon in the Shatneresque mold – and I mean that only in a good way because Philip Glennister was a hoot in the role), but this being US TV, there is the convention that shows need to be more star-driven. O’Mara was hardly “star” material. I’m encouraged to learn that most of the supporting characters have been restored in the latest incarnation and perhaps it will have more of an ensemble tone.
Also, speaking of casting, Colm Meany is a wonderful character actor, and he played a VERY Hunt-like character in INTERMISSION, but he was way too subdued in the first US version. I’m chalking that up to miserable direction, ’cause the guy has the chops to play likable badass. With Harvey Keitel now playing Hunt, this could be either a good or bad thing; great if he’s in BAD LIEUTENANT mode, bad if he phones it in like NATIONAL TREASURE.
The other good point on the newest version is that the setting has been switched from LA to New York. I know LA has its seedier sections, but LIFE ON MARS requires a kind of grit that that works against the protagonist Tyler. He’s from a cushier contemporary era, and the LA of the 70s just had less chrome and glass – it’s not as big a stretch as jumping from Bloomberg NY to Lindsay NY.
Anyway, in the long run, I think the show will be canceled after 3 or four outings. It’s too expensive and has gone through too much production turmoil and tinkering to validate the enormous effort in adapting it to the tube. The premise can’t be sustained for a long run anyway unless they went off in a completely different direction. Might have worked better as a miniseries or perhaps a feature film.
My two cents.
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