Life on Mars and Other Things

Last year I managed to do pretty well with my regular treadmill sessions. I think I clocked almost an hour a day six days a week for the entire last six months, which may not sound like much but was definitely more than I had been managing before. After my brother's wedding in October, however, my treadmill sessions started to become few and far between.

Around New Years, someone I was following on Tumblr mentioned wanting to get back to exercising regularly, and I decided it was high time for me to return to regular exercise as well. I'd built up a small list of things on Netflix that I could watch while on the treadmill, so I couple of weeks ago I picked a TV show at random and started walking.

The show I ended up deciding on was the American version of Life on Mars, about a cop named Sam Tyler who's hit by a car and wakes up in the year 1973. The show is based off a British drama of the same name, and I decided on the American remake for various reasons. One, Netflix didn't have the UK original available on Instant; Two, mixed reviews online lead me to believe that both versions have their own pros and cons; Three, John Simm, the actor who played the protagonist in the British original, also played one of the most wonderfully horrific villains in Doctor Who, and is thus forever tainted in my eyes.

(This last point is meant to be humorous, by the way; I'm positive John Simm is a wonderful actor, and I think if Netflix did have the original version on Instant I probably would have watched it instead, just to have the chance to see Simm in a different role.)

The title for the show comes from a David Bowie song, which would have been re-released as a single in 1973, the year Sam wakes up in. I don't know much about David Bowie, or music in general for that matter, but this song seems to fit pretty well with the premise of the show; it's very clearly a police procedural, but it's also a bit of a psychological drama or mystery, with Sam spending the majority of his time trying to figure out why he is where he is - in a coma? time travel? - and how to get back.

I can definitely say this isn't a show my dad would like, because my dad isn't overly fond of genre-mixing, and this is quite the genre mixup. Sam spends most of the time trying to act like nothing is wrong in front of his coworkers, who think he's a transfer, but he is constantly seeing reminders of his past and hints of something bigger working against him.

Is it just me or do some of these guys look copy-pasted from some colorized 60s film?

When the show wasn't being vaguely sci-fi, it was very much an early 1970s period piece. The writers and directors must have had fun portraying 1973 New York in all it's glory; the sets and costuming were perfect, and it was fun seeing Sam trying to adjust to the vastly different policing style and social mindset.

All in all it was a pretty good show, but it had the misfortune of being not extremely engaging. I could watch while walking on the treadmill, but I constantly felt like I should be doing something else, too. I ended up watching most of this series on the couch, staples papers for my mom or doing some other menial chore.

While the original UK version had two seasons, the US remake only got one. I figured this would mean the plot was more condensed and would along move faster, but it turns out the writers didn't intend this to be the case, so the ending was a bit rushed. We do finally find out what is really happening to Sam in the last episode, and I was surprised; I'm sure some viewers felt it was a cop out (no pun intended), but I enjoyed it, especially because of how unexpected it was.

That being said, it's a plot I think might work better as a book (the US version, that is; apparently the original had a more vague, 'open' ending). If this had been written as a book, it certainly would have been one I'd have liked to see in my collection.

Now that I've finished that, I'm working on the backload of shows saved on my Netflix queues, and I recently added a bunch of British television/movies, enough to keep me going for a while. I'll review any I finish if they're good enough (this is also kind of a joke. It's British TV; obviously it's good).

Class is starting up next week, and I'm taking fencing on Tuesday evenings and Yoga on Friday mornings, so I wont be limited to our treadmill for my exercise anymore. Nonetheless, I'm kind of excited to work through my Netflix backlog!