The man who fell to earth
looks at the new British-inspired show, Life on Mars, about a modern-day cop who suddenly finds himself in the 1970s.
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
--"Life on Mars" by David Bowie
LIFE ON Mars, starring Irish actor Jason O'Mara and Harvey Keitel, premiered last Thursday on ABC. It is part of a new wave of overseas (mostly British) dramas that have been adapted for American network television.
ABC has advertised it as "the next great cop show." Life on Mars is not a bad show. It is slightly above average. But because most cop shows are so backward, mediocre and predictable, it doesn't take a lot to be above average. The real problem with Life on Mars is that it portrays the police as "better" now--more sophisticated, less brutal--than in the distant past of the 1970s.
O'Mara plays New York City detective Sam Tyler. In present-day New York, Tyler and his partner/lover Maya Daniels (Lisa Bonet) are in pursuit of a serial killer terrorizing the city. The cops of 2008 are handsome and svelte. The interracial relationship of Sam and Maya sparks no particular curiosity from their coworkers; they just have the "normal" problems of balancing work and private life.
Their biggest issue for them is when should Sam meet the parents. This is the police force of the imagination. But life gets thrown off of its normal course during their murder investigation when Sam is struck by a speeding car and transported back to 1973.
Now why this is happening to Sam is the big question of the show. Is he there as a result of some supernatural-induced time travel to find the 2008 serial killer and stop him then, or is all of this a weird dream caused by a traumatic brain injury? This question will undoubtedly plague him for however long the show is on television.
The other big question is why 1973? Is there something about the year--when the U.S. war in Vietnam came to an end and the Watergate scandal began to destroy the Nixon presidency--that will play an important role in Sam's quest? From the first episode, it doesn't appear so. It appears to be an arbitrary date.
When Sam wakes up in the past, he is immediately bewildered at being in a world of no cell phones, the eight-track cassette in his Corvette playing "Life on Mars" by David Bowie and the luminescent twin towers of the World Trade Center looming over him. The New York City he discovers, for some reason, looks a lot like San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district during the 1967 Summer of Love.
Like any good cop, Tyler heads immediately for his precinct headquarters (the "old 125"), and, after demanding to know where his desk is, he is assaulted by his commanding officer, Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) who wants to show him who the "king" is. The rest of the squad is mostly made of handlebar-mustached, wide-lapel suit wearing men, with the sole exception of the blonde Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol), the psychology graduate, who must endure the brutal sexism of her brothers-in-blue with the exception of the sympathetic, modern man Sam Tyler.
The 1973-era cops who prefer using their fists rather than their brains also frustrate Sam. But what frustrates me is not the possible time travel theme of the show, but the absolutely fantastical idea that the police are better today. Hundreds if not thousands of Black and Latino men have been framed for crimes that they didn't commit by the allegedly more scientific and sophisticated modern police over the last two decades.
Is Life on Mars the next great cop show? I don't think so. Cop shows have been on American television for a very long time--from its "golden era" in the 1950s to the present day where the airwaves are cluttered with various versions of CSI, Law and Order and many other forgettable shows.
My favorite cop show is still Columbo starring Peter Falk. Any originality was beaten out of them long ago, so they have lately relied on what are essentially gimmicks to make the new shows appear fresh and interesting. There were a number of them last year that a friend described as "I see dead people" cop shows, most notably Jeff Goldblum's Raines.
Why not combine some of the best ideas from British and American television? Why not have a television series about a cop who travels back to various points in time, like the early 1990s show Quantum Leap? To 1919 when the Boston Police went on strike, to 1937 when Chicago cops gunned down 10 striking steelworkers in the back, to the early 1970s to expose police surveillance of activists, or present-day Chicago to expose police torture and corruption? But, why be original with a plot, when one can just steal?
