One of my pleasures as a cinephile or fan of TV series is to find in them stories about time leaps or time travel. When the production is dated 17 years ago, as happens with the series ‘Life on Mars‘ (2006-2007) the time trip becomes even more interesting. We are dealing with three temporal planes – the one left by the hero (in this series 2006), the one in which the story takes him (1973) and the one in which we, the viewers, watch (2023). The viewers, from their armchairs, compare not only the time periods in the story with each other but also with our present. When the producer of the series is the BBC and the heroes are policemen or detectives, we have a good chance of encountering a well-written story with believable characters, with a developed sense of justice and constantly faced with moral and legal dilemmas. But between 2006 and 1973 the difference can be abysmal, especially if, as for lead detective Sam Tyler, time travel is undesirable and returning ‘home’ – that is, to his own time – is almost always the main thought and motivation for most of his actions.
The time transport vehicle plays an essential role in ‘Life on Mars‘. It is not some sophisticated machine invented by a brilliant scientist, but an almost fatal car accident. Sam Tyler is a senior detective at Manchester Police, where he works together with his girlfriend. During the investigation in the search for a serial killer, she disappears, and Sam, who is on his way to help her, has a traffic accident. We can hear David Bowie singing ‘Life on Mars’ on the car radio. The same song is also played on his car radio when he wakes up, but the car is a completely different model and the year is 1973. We’re still in Manchester, Sam is still a detective (somewhat lower in the police hierarchy), but the world seems completely different. The city is dirty, modern buildings are missing and there are no mobile phones. Everybody smokes everywhere, policemen are not embarrassed to drink on duty and work using primitive methods, including physical pressure during interrogations. Sam tries to fit in this world, works on solving some more or less interesting police cases and is always looking for the gate through which he could return ‘home’, i.e. in his time.
Two seasons of eight episodes each were made of ‘Life on Mars‘. The charm of the series comes largely from the confrontation of the hero with the world in which he has landed. 33 years shouldn’t be a huge difference, but for the show’s creators, it seems like it is. The England of 2006 is so changed that Sam Tyler, arrived in 1973, experiences the (declared) sensation of being on another planet. The connection to his real world is made not only through memories but also through sporadic and mysterious contacts – telephones ringing in the mid of the night or television shows where he hears voices from ‘home’. Is he in a prolonged dream due to the coma he was in after the accident in 2006? Maybe after the surgeries and treatment the doctors will be able to save him and bring him back home? He cannot tell the truth (‘I come from the future’), because everybody around would look at him as to a madman. In addition, the world of 1973 seems so real: a boss who is all the time drunk and a bit violent but who in the end solves complicated police cases with the good goal of bringing peace to the citizens of the city, or a few colleagues who are a bit inept by the criteria of 2006 but ready to risk their lives to carry out their missions, a young policewoman who Sam is attracted to but is hesitant to get involved with because he knows he will have to leave her one way or another. A few things haven’t changed – for example Manchester football fans are divided into two camps that hate each other to death (sometimes literally): City fans and United fans. In each episode Sam’s struggle to figure out how he ended up in 1973 and to return to 2006 is combined with an independent police plot. Not all is bad in this world: the wonderful music of the early 70s accompanies every episode, and the free air of England at the height of the pop, beat and hippie movements eras seems much more diverse and interesting than the puritanical atmosphere of 2006, that let alone the one in 2023. The main roles feature some fine British actors, mostly known from TV series: John Simm plays Sam Tyler with authenticity and sensitivity, Philip Glenister is excellent as the drunken, apparently misogynistic and racist police chief, but devoted to his profession and the people he works with, and Liz White is convincing as the policewoman who gives the hero a reason to stay, perhaps, in the world of 1973. I found the episodes in the second season better written, with tighter action and more interesting cases. The exception is the last episode, in which the riddle of the jump in time and the problem of returning to 2006 are solved, but the possibility of returning to 1973 is also left open, for a possible third season. It was not to be, because the producers decided to interrupt the series. Too bad, because it was getting more and more interesting. On this occasion, the thread in the first case, which had triggered the entire action, was also lost, leaving unsolved the serial killer case. But even so, there are quite a few good reasons to look on the streaming platforms for the 16 episodes produced of ‘Life on Mars‘ and to watch or rewatch them.