Music From Mars

Coincidentally, I started watching Life On Mars just as its star, John Simm, was announced as appearing in the new series of Doctor Who.

It's rumoured that either he or Derek Jacobi will play another Time Lord - possibly both the same one since they have a habit of regenerating into new actors. I'm excited. A youthful portrayal of The Master would be a fine nemesis for the current Doctor in the same way that Tobey Maguire and Topher Grace are cast well as opposites in Spider-Man 3. You can expect plenty of Doctor content here when he returns to my screen in ten days so let's concentrate on Mars for now.

It's a cop show with a surreal twist: D.I. Tyler is hit by a speeding car while listening to The Best Of Bowie on his iPod. When he wakes up he's inexplicably living in the 1970s, dealing with out-dated methods of policing and the social attitudes of the era. What stops it being just another Quantum Leap is the suggestion that Sam (Tyler, not Beckett) is actually in a coma from his accident and the people he meets "in the past" are facets of his own psyche trying to lead him back to a waking life in the year 2006.

Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy
Wonder if he'll ever know he's in the best-selling show

- Life On Mars? by David Bowie (1971).

Because we're watching Sam's subjective coma experience and not something that purports to be reality, the station interior is lit and shot oddly and the dialogue is more fun than real life too: "It's 1973. Almost dinner time. I'm having Hoops!" There's the occasional anachronism when the budget falls short of the cost of retro-fitting the entire city of Manchester to look like it did three decades ago, but nothing so sloppy as the Wolverine comic in the opening flashback of The Departed!

The music of the period plays a prominent role in the drama - if Sam had been listening to Hungry Like The Wolf when he was hit, would he think he was living the 1980s now? My only real gripe is that the official soundtrack album contains only half of the music used in the series. Thankfully, I'm not the only one who feels this way and home-made compilations aren't subject to the same rights clearance issues...