I bet it wasn’t hard to find a 70s office block to film this episode in. For all the fuss about how the Ashes to Ashes researchers had trouble finding filming locations in London that haven’t changed beyond recognition since the early 80s, I bet they too had no trouble finding dingy mildewed offices.

Anyway, it’s Ray’s birthday and Sam’s not invited to the party. He’s not making an effort to fit in, you see, and the ‘Happy Birthday Ray, you poofter’ banner almost seems designed to purposely offend a 21st century PC PC.

Of course, not fitting in won’t get him out of there any sooner. so his subconscious decides to tell a tale of another misfit.

On arriving at the hostage scene at the local newspaper offices, Sam approaches Reg’s van with extreme caution, almost as you might a suspected terrorist’s holdall. This kind of stakeout looks completely at odds with 1973. Sam suggests that the team form a ‘donut’ around the hostage location, to everyone’s amusement.

Jackie Queen, later to reappear in Ashes to Ashes, is far softer and professional in LOM. What happens over the next 9 years? Is there more to her relationship with Gene than we think? Is she the reason his marriage falls apart? Or the reason he moves to London? She clearly becomes fond of Sam, when he ‘dies’ does she blame Gene and force him to relocate?

Reg quotes the Connecticut Yankee – ‘A man out of time, stranded in a heathen world.’ Then exchanges a knowing look with Sam. But which world is he referring to? Surely not tame old 1973? This is the first point in the series where I wonder if Sam is really from 2006 after all. And how does Reg know? Like Martin Summers, he seems pretty keen to get out of there…

The handling of the hostage situation invariably results in Sam, Gene and Annie locked in a room, awaiting their fate. They share the images that they think will flash before them as they die, fearing the worst. Sam’s flashback is his most recent birthday in 1973. Is that the reason he’s ended up there after all? Is he just caught in a never-ending flashback?

Ray’s got a cold…surely only real people get ill? Then Chris gets caught in a goal net. My feeling watching this was that perhaps the team are all patients experiencing trauma. The feeling dissipated later in the episode when Ray was revealed to be skiving off work!

Sam thinks Gene is jumping to a lazy conclusion that a Manchester City fan has been killed by a Red. Gene informs Sam that he doesn’t know the city like he does. Which city? Gene knows Sam is from Manchester…

Chicken in a basket. I love the disgusted reaction to something that will become the epitome of alcohol fuelled dining a few short years later. This is assuming that their reaction is fear of the unknown rather than weariness of a product they’ve already endured…

“I’m not sure that’s ethical…”
“No, it’s not, it’s vodka.”

Gene pretending to be pissed, not as neanderthal as he seems? Especially when he drinks so much in order to pretend to be pissed that he ends up…very pissed indeed. This is interesting as it’s one of the few times where Gene isn’t in control.

Sam isn’t wearing aftershave but Annie smells something…some kind of medication from the real world?

Sam sees his younger self going to the football with his dad. Did he need to find the killer in order to see that happen? He looks his younger self full in the face which he then avoids later in the series.

Alex, similarly, won’t make eye contact with her younger self. Did Sam tell her about this first meeting? Did she miss a vital clue about her parents’ demise by avoiding this confrontation? Sam solves his personal demon – his father’s disappearance – by dealing with the situation more directly.

Is this what Caroline Price is trying to say when she returns in a dream sequence in series 2?

The opening scene sees Sam repeating Gene’s toy stamping threat to an adult. Then, CID are called to the site if his future warehouse conversion flat, where they proceed to do exactly that.

When Sam is listening to nurses in 2006 discussing his coma on the on car radio, Gene does appear to be asleep. As soon as Phyllis arrives on air and mentions a stabbing he springs to life, or was he slowly resuscitated by the aroma of the bacon sandwich awaiting him? Does this mean he heard the nurses but was waiting to react to something relevant to him not Sam?

“Living things need to keep working on the inside.” Fairly self explanatory.

Gene goads Sam, telling him he’s got ‘no fight’ echoing the nurses’ comments heard over the car radio.

Lytton is a caricature – a brilliant one at that. When Gene smells his Paco Rabanne scented arrival at the station, Sam also smells something. Or not? He looks confused.

Annie discusses the future flat conversion of factory as if she has accepted Sam’s prediction. Is she genuinely open minded, humouring him or does she believe him? Now that we know that she goes on to marry Sam, surely she has had to reconcile the fact that he is either telling the truth or she has married someone a bit loopy.

In dreams trying to match another person’s thought process usually fails,but in a split second Sam and Gene are able to non-verbally unite to throw Lytton off the scent with a story about fake guns.

Gene’s face when Sam tells him his problem would rock his world seems amused as if he’s heard it all before…

I think the BBC press officer assigned to A2A has gone a bit mad…

Philip Glenister has said John Simm is to Ashes to Ashes what Robbie Williams is to Take That.

The 46-year-old actor starred as DCI Gene Hunt in 70s cop drama Life On Mars alongside Simm as Sam Tyler and now stars in follow-up 80s series Ashes to Ashes with Keeley Hawes.

But he revealed that he believes the two series are successful in their own right and Simm does not need to make a comeback.

Philip said: “I’m not comparing myself to Take That – but Take That and Robbie Williams comes back… they’ve created their own persona now and people go well, ‘do Take That need Robbie Williams’?

He added: “And that’s no disrespect to John – it’s a character thing, it’s not an actor thing.”

“All I know is his character is integral to the arc of series, including Life On Mars and Ashes.

“Sam Tyler is talked about in this series. Questions will be answered about his past and what happened to him in the interim period.”

Philip revealed he was sad to say goodbye to the character of Gene Hunt but another series was not an option.

He said: “The fact that’s it’s taken the public imagination by storm and me by storm, my career. It will be a huge wrench to say goodbye to him but I just feel deep down that it’s the right time to finish.

“We have to conclude it rather than drag it on. One of the great appeals of the show is the nostalgia value. And we’re setting this one in ‘83, as soon as you start going into the 90s there’s no nostalgia value. It’s too close.”

Now I could be way off here but this isn’t the kind of comparison I imagine PG arriving at himself, since he isn’t woman in her late 20s or early 30s. The BBC press officer in question though, probably is. I’m not going to start lecturing a fellow PR person but…make it believable next time? I expect PG cares as much about Take That and Robbie as he does Katie and Peter. I daren’t even imagine Gene Hunt’s reaction *shivers*

You’re going to end up on Lost in Showbiz at this rate…

It’s all a ploy to throw us off the scent anyway.

A fair amount of this episode is set in the dingy staff canteen. Having said that I love nothing more than 70s style greasy spoons, they remind me of being taken out shopping by mum. Lime milkshakes, chips and formica.

So, investigating an armed robbery on a jeweller’s Gene produce what Sam refers to as ‘knocked off bling’. Bling being a word that has worked its way into the educated masses’ vocabulary by 2006 and is no longer cool. And, apparently, worked it’s way back to 70s monocultural Manchester as Gene fails to bat an eyelid. Hmm.

But, soon, after the rest of the team have mobilised a game of football in the office and nearly knock down Gene’s Gary Cooper poster in the process, Sam insists they have to let the culprit go due to lack of evidence. Gene eyes Sam with silent contempt then asks, ‘Are they all like you in Hyde? It must be a bloody dangerous place.’  Hyde isn’t that far away. By the time A2A comes around, Gene seems fond of Hyde.

Thanks to Sam’s modern policing, station cleaner June is soon shot by the reoffending culprit. The ambulance has no medical staff, only a driver. In reality, the move from transportation only to mobile hospital was prompted by a 1952 rail crash. Was Manchester 19 years behind the rest of the country?

The enigmatic Nelson and his ever changing accent remind Sam that he has to make the best of it. Sam implores whoever has sent him back in time to move him to 1988. As the pub lights flicker, Nelson notices, but puts it down to the power cuts. The rest of the cast can’t usually see or hear the messages Sam receives.

Annie informs Sam that if she went back in time, she’d use the opportunity to place some bets. She also tells him the people around here are tight with each because they have to be. ‘You have to believe in the people around you.’  Is referring to those who work in the police force or another community?

Does Sam ever convince Annie that he arrived from the future in the seven years they spend together? When he disappears does she go with him?

Sam starts to wonder if Gene controls his fate and test the waters by requesting a transfer back to Hyde. Gene references the Wizard of Oz then informs Sam that he was transferred at his own request. What if, those scenes that allegedly flash before your eyes as you die are more important than we realise. What if you latch on to the biggest regret, the outcome you wish you could change, and that is the time and place in which you end up? This would seem true of both Sam and Alex.

You all know what happens…

Sam is run over by an E reg car…this is an old car. As a car philistine…how likely is it that an 19 year old Vauxhall would be commonplace in Manchester in 2006?  Who would be likely to drive such a car?  And I might be being spectacularly naive here but…we have a four year old BMW with so many issues I can barely see it achieving a fifth birthday.

The scene immediately after the impact of the car – I kept rewatching this as it looked as if the right hand side of the flyover where Sam was hit became blurred and became slightly disconnected from the flyover and left hand side.

The flyover, promo postered in 1973, was in reality completed in 1967. Deliberate?

Once Sam stumbles back to the police station, and causes enough commotion to wake Gene, Sam asks him what year it is. Gene does not seem remotely surprised by this, knocks him about a bit then informs him that it’s 1973 (almost dinnertime, and he’s having hoops). Is he used to needing to inform his DI’s of the current year upon their arrival at the station?

The scene where they discuss forensics on the recently murdered girl is interesting. The team does not react when Sam, not yet accepting his surroundings, suggests that they dust for prints. They seem, to me, to be almost waiting for him to suggest methods which don’t fit with 1973 so that they can knock him down.

Annie seems genuinely shocked at Sam’s claims that he has arrived from 2006. And she’s not in Ashes to Ashes but the others are. Does that mean that Annie was definitely real in 1973?

Nelson’s ‘you are where you are’ speech to Sam when he tells him he’s feeling lost. His accent changes. His 1973 accent is Jamaican, but when talking confidentially to Sam his accent is present day Mancunian. Even if he is only adopting the Jamaican accent to put the rest of the team at ease, why does he feel he can trust Sam with his true persona having met him the same day? Is Nelson also from the present day? I hope so as it could mean that he resurfaces in A2A3…I love Nelson. He doesn’t seem that shocked when Sam orders a Diet Coke…but then, neither does Gene…

Overall picture: a thought

When you die naturally, perhaps you are reborn immediately, but with no recollection of your previous life. If you hover between life and death, perhaps this partly happens. You can’t quite rebirth into a different person so you stay the same as the moment you died. You get sent back to an earlier point in your life until your fate is resolved. If you do enough in your new surroundings, you can change the course of your eventual fate. what Alex and Sam haven’t done so far is try to directly manipulate their younger selves, only the people around them.

By the way, when I had swine flu recently, I thought I’d figured everything out. Then when the fever subsided, I lost it.

Questo post nasceva con l’intento di analizzare – senza troppe pretese, per carità – le prime (e uniche) due stagioni di Life on Mars, la serie anglosassone che ha riscosso un incredibile successo di critica e pubblico in Inghilterra, tanto da fargli valere un remake tutto americano (e una versione italiana dall’agghiacciate titolo 29 Settembre). Ma andiamo con ordine: dopo aver visto l’enigmatico finale, è difficile – se non impossibile – non disquisire sulle molteplici interpretazioni, piuttosto che riprendere le parole con le quali i critici hanno osannato la serie. Eppure un minimo di commento globale devo farlo: Life On Mars è una gran serie. Perché si butta in un genere inflazionatissimo e ne esce a testa alta, perché polizieschi e affini li producono praticamente tutti, ma una qualsiasi fiction italiana (e non solo) vale meno di una singola idea presa a caso da una puntata qualsiasi. Perché aldilà del plot iniziale, i semplici casi di fondo sono ben sopra la media. E infine perché, per rivitalizzare il genere, va a scavare all’origine – nel 1973, appunto – scovando un mondo che sa essere molto più interessante dei tecnologici anni Duemila. Ecco, questi sono i motivi per cui avreste dovuto seguire Life On Mars. O per cui dovreste comparvi i 2 dvd (o magari pregare per una nuova trasmissione, cosa improbabile per Rai Due, un pò meno per Rai 4). Se invece l’avete già vista, non avrete paura degli spoiler qua sotto sul finale e potete proseguire nella lettura.
Che cavolo di fine ha fatto Sam Tyler? Innanzitutto: il passato del Sam del 1973, quella copertura voluta da Morgan, era solo una prova per testare la forza del paziente o era davvero la realtà? Tutto farebbe optare per la prima opzione, eppure abbiamo ben capito quale fosse per Sam la vita vera, quella che valeva la pena di vivere; se poi il suo futuro è nel ‘73, bè, un qualche passato dovrà pure averlo nel ‘73, no? Secondo dubbio, quello classico: Sam si è risvegliato e poi suicidato o l’operazione è andata male? In questo caso sono addirittura gli addetti ai lavori a scontrarsi: per Matthew Graham – uno degli autori - sarebbe valida la prima ipotesi, per l’attore John Simm la seconda. Premettendo che per farsi un’idea occorrerebbe guardarsi il sequel spirituale, Ashes to Ashes (cosa che conto di fare presto e che, leggendo distrattamente il plot, pare confermare l’ipotesi del suicidio), trovo molto più azzeccata, sebbene dura da digerire, la scelta del risveglio e poi della morte: insomma, il disgraziato ha cercato per due stagioni di tornare alla vita vera e, quando ce la fa, capisce di aver remato contro la sua stessa volontà; così sceglie l’unica via rimasta: il suicidio. Con il bel messaggio che l’Aldilà in fondo è la concretizzazione di tutto quello che desideriamo. E per Sam Tyler il paradiso è il 1973.

“The Grieving Season Continues: Mourning the Loss of Last Season’s Sci-Fi Shows Cut Down Before Their Time.”

Following in the vein of my last column that summer is the season for grieving over lost science-fiction characters, I now want to honor and recognize the sci-fi television shows that were brutally cut off at the knees last year.

While the death of a favorite character is hard enough to bear, it is even more devastating when a whole show is killed off. In fact, my heart still grievously aches over this past season’s savage cancellation of so many brilliant sci-fi shows.

Continue reading article at:

LINK http://www.airlockalpha.com/feature/6530/tv-watchtower-the-grieving-season-continues.html

Last week’s five-part Torchwood extravaganza may well have been totally unexpectedly astonishingly good (even if they did kill off Ianto for no good reason, and the ending was so annoyingly poor it would have shamed the producers of Life On Mars), and may well have finished up threatening to dethrone the ratings-toppings ’supersoaps’, but perhaps the truest measure of its popularity is that during those five days, no less than sixteen thousand, two hundred and seventy three readers alighted on these here pages in search of, you guessed it, ‘eve myles tits’. Unfortunately there is no way of accurately measuring how many of them stayed around to read a load of nonsense about Charles McHaltenwood and ‘Dinners’.

Meanwhile, somewhat slightly lower down the search stats came ‘copy of rolf on saturday’, ‘nathan petrelli can work a photocopier’, ‘phil cool spitting image gallery’, ‘what are those plastic eyeballs on springs called’, ‘tv ark go to work’, ‘katanga katanga katanga’, ‘aa gill earth song’, and ‘when is grimleys on?’. Funny you should ask…

As the post below this one, about the peculiarities of BBC children’s continuity, has proved to be the most widely critically acclaimed Out On Blue Six rambling since that one about The Beatles thwarting plans to ‘rob’ Penny Lane, it’s well worth shamelessly capitalising on this by doing the odd occasional further diversion into the murky world of continuity (though happily free from the usual mouth-frothing about immingrants and Benny Hill and Michael Parkinson remaining ‘consumate’ after being bitten by Emu that usually seems to accompany discussion of continuity for some reason).

This time, it’s the turn of what you’ve all been waiting for… Programmes For Schools And Colleges! Illustrations as ever courtesy of the fabbo Sub-TV:

We start off right back in the mists of time, the 1950s to be precise, when ‘Telesnap’ maestro John Cura was clearly still perfecting his art as he hadn’t yet realised that we don’t actually need to see the TV around the image too. And note that it’s a ‘normal’ TV rather than one of those school-favoured ‘Big Tellies’ with shutters on the front, which probably has something to do with rationing. Anyway, this is what schoolchildren would have seen back in the days when Elvis Presley was only allowed to be seen on TV from the knees down and the Birds Eye Teddy Boys were waiting around the corner to administer a good kicking to Professor Quatermass, and it’s… well, what is it exactly? There’s the words ‘BBC Television For Schools’ and what appears to be a partial closeup of a planet, straight out of a Gerry Anderson title sequence. Lord knows what that was all about. Actually, wasn’t there a schools’ TV show around that time called Space School or something, or was that just Andrew Pixley playing a massive practical joke on us all?

Now we come to the first example of that fondly Kate Thornton-remembered cornerstone of every schoolchild’s academic career, the Animated Countdown. If this wasn’t the first one ever, then it’s certainly the first one that there’s really any evidence of – dating from the late sixties, and no doubt causing many a ‘bad trip’ for members of The Waltham Green East Wapping Carpet Cleaning Rodent And Boggit Extermination Association, this took the form of a strobing-friendly Pie Chart which segmentally flicked away as the latest edition of Do Your Blasted Maths drew ever nearer. This was generally accompanied by some upbeat - if slightly clinical sounding – steel band music, somewhat incongrously the work of one Leonard Salzedo, more notorious for penning the bastard scary stentorian intro fanfare for The Open University.

Except that bastard scariness was a key component of this schools-cueing sequence after all, as when there were but sixty seconds left to go, the Pie Chart would give way to this rather unsettling chronometer, looking for all the world like some sort of sinister Cold War version of the Play School clock and doubtless counting down the remaining time until some labcoated creaky sci-fi film experiment into something involving ‘the atom’ goes apocalyptically – or at least rocket-threateningly – wrong. Yet another example of the apparent complete obliviousness of those involved in child-skewed programming in the sixties to realise if something they’d knocked together might actually scare the living daylights out of younger viewers, though actually this may just have been a cunning gambit to ensure they welcomed the tedious academic programming that followed with open arms. Either way, somewhere, Leonard Salzedo and his cadre of fanatics were rubbing their hands in satisfaction.

Anyway, enough black and white-ness. Let us leave that behind with the image of a spinning Patrick Troughton saying “stop, you’re making me giddy”, and move on to the advent of colour and, more importantly, the advent of that icon of our times, the BBC Schools Diamond. Woah yes. Over a two-minute stretch accompanied by Soft Machine-esque prog-jazz (or for programmes aimed at secondary school pupils anyway – never mind the bloody sub-Music And Movement woodwind and percussion variant used for primary schools, which annoyingly seems to be the one that people tend to recall more fondly), the diamond would pulse outwards, then dissolve into a psychedelic shower of smaller diamonds, before disappearing completely. Here it is as presented in its original colour scheme, a subtle combination of black and Sam Tyler Blue.

A couple of years later, and to bring the BBC Schools Diamond in line with current thinking on the BBC Globe colour scheme, it’s been given a slight makeover and become a yellow-and-blue totem of Glam Rock-era graphic design with chunky lettering to boot. With the possible exception of Patrick Mower carrying one of those bags that said ‘SPORTS’ on them, you’d be hard pushed to find a more definitive visual representation of everything that was ‘the seventies’ until Johnny Rotten came along and phoned up Andrew Sachs to call him a ‘Revenge Of The Pink Panther Rotter’. Endlessly watchable (if you are certifiably insane) and usually better than the programmes that followed it, though in fairness that wasn’t exactly a difficult feat to achieve. But what of the famed ‘interactivity’ for the countdown-counting-down schoolroom viewer, of which there seems to be little in evidence here? All in good time…

WHUH?! What the fuck’s going on here? Why would anyone, anywhere ever need a continuity slide of the BBC Schools Diamond? ‘FOLLOWS SHORTLY Follows Shortly’????? At a push, it could just about theoretically have been used at the very commencement of schools’ broadcasting (because, don’t forget, they didn’t have Breakfast Television in ‘old money’, and all that you got out of hours was the Test Card, a blank screen, and the occasional bit of The Black And White Minstrel Show going backwards) to announce that, well, schools’ broadcasting was about to follow, but what would have been the point of that? Would anyone even have been watching? Well, apart from Bawrence of course. Notice also that the diamond is a) suspiciously slimmer than usual and b) has four layers rather than the usual three. There’s probably a very good reason for this, though – ident fans take note - probably not anything to do with Harold Wilson’s stance on the EEC.

And now, it’s the one you’ve all been waiting for – the celebrated ‘dots’, which blinked offscreen as the seconds ticked away and tedious classroom jokers pretending to be ’shooting’ them. Of course, if they were looking for a real laugh, then if they’d stopped their antics for a second they might have noticed that the ‘Schools And Colleges’ bit used to rotate, but would occasionally apparently break down mid-rotation and remain stuck in a skewed position for days on end. Oddly, the ‘dots’ would generally be accompanied by a selection of soft-rock classics, culled from the back catalogues of the likes of Wings, The Bee Gees and Cat Stevens’ Remember The Days Of The Old Nationwide Theme, though surely the oddest – and yet also strangely the most widely remembered – was Bart, an hilariously badly-named FM Radio-friendly guitar instrumental by obscure Creedence Clearwater Revival offshoot post-proggers Ruby. Sadly, not even Wikipedia at its most Citation Needing gives any indication of what the band might have felt about being more famous amongst Brit schoolchildren than American muso ‘heads’

…and that’s your lot. From here, sadly, it’s subtly shaded ‘==2==’ caption slides all the way.

Where to start? There was so much to take in that I’ve only just got to writing up my thoughts on the first episode of the new series of Ashes to Ashes.

I’m going to focus on the things that may turn out to be significant.

Hospital scene

Only an hour has passed since Alex was shot. I think this means that a year in 1982 equates to an hour in 2008. I’m reasonably convinced, due to the presence of the 4th generation ipod, that the person in the hospital bed is Sam. This could mean that Sam remained in a coma after his leap in 2007.

Grange Hill

If Molly is in Grange Hill in 1982, does this mean she is also in 1982? The credit for Brian Capron could be significant. As far as I remember, the younger cast used to be credited before the teachers.

The stripper from Hyde

I think the reappearance of Hyde journalist Jackie McQueen later in the series will either reveal the mystery surrounding Gene’s ex-wife or what happened to Sam. I saw the figure in the background, and I know Kevin Hales admitted to killing Sally, along with his friend, but…I’ve rewatched the way she was shot. A moment before, Alex hears the air ambulance sirens from 2008 and looks into the light, then Sally is shot. It looks odd…my first instinct was that Sally caught a bullet, or was impacted, by something from 2008.

Dr Death

As far as we know, the only other person to time travel was Sam. I would like Sam to return, but wonder why he is so hostile to Alex? Assuming that she refused to believe him whilst he described travelling back to 1973, maybe he is angry that she is now inhabiting his world. The coma he fell into after jumping off the roof in 2007, could have finally come back to claim him in 1980. But since his body was never found, perhaps he was only being temporarily held in limbo.

Diana

I wonder if this might just be a way of indicating that the mysterious stalker knows about the future. It would probably be one of the most shocking things to tell someone in 1982. Note that in the final scene the stalker says he was holding back the grieving hordes at her funeral in 1997. Sam was in the force, and higher ranking police from across the country were probably deployed to London that day…

The second series of Ashes To Ashes kicks off on BBC tonight, and it’s fair to say that I’ll probably end up watching it. But not necessarily enjoying – I hated the first series. After an epic end to Life On Mars the creators decided to drag back the characters (well, minus Sam Tyler) and try to do it all over again. The only problem was, they’ve removed almost everything that was great last time around.

Please ignore the quote of the front of DVD box-set. Ashes To Ashes is not better than Life On Mars. Take a look at the back of the Spider-man 3 DVD. You’ll see a belter of a quote from Mr Jonathan Ross – “This is Spidey’s best adventure yet.” It just goes to show that these quotes mean bugger all. Let’s move on. What makes Ashes To Ashes so bloody terrible?

First of all – the main character. Sam Tyler has been replaced with an annoying, stuck-up woman called [Note: I had to look this up. Really shows the kind of impact the character made doesn't it?] Alex Drake. So instead of an interesting character dynamic between Tyler and Gene Hunt as they battle to out-do the other whilst solving the crime, we get a corny love story in which nothing of any real interest happens. It’s just a scene per episode of sexual tension. Maybe this would be OK if the main character was remotely likeable, but she isn’t. I would hope she’s killed off in the first episode of the new series – it might make the remaining episodes a bit better.

Alex Drake is a trained police psychologist studying Sam Tyler’s suicide. OK, we all know he jumped off a building to return back to his fantasy world in 1973, but what happened to him in that world? Is he still alive? No. “Dead”, Ray tells us. And let me guess… his body was never found? What a fantastically written ending. But I’ll let that slide – you never know, more may become of this in series 2.

And now to the rest of the characters. Gene Hunt, who was utterly brilliant in Life On Mars is a shadow of his former self. He just doesn’t have the same spark this time around. Ray has gone from the moody, bullying rival to a curly head fool, and Chris would be fine, it it wasn’t for his relationship with “Shaz” Granger – which is almost has unbearable as Drake and Hunt’s. Even the weird-ass clown that follows Drake about isn’t a chilling as the little girl that haunts Sam Tyler.

The storylines, whilst not horrible, aren’t anything worth shouting about. In fact – I can’t really remember what happens in specific episodes. Whether that is a result of poor memory or poor writing is your call. But the main story revolves around Drake’s attempt to save her parents, who are killed in a car explosion when Drake was a child. Drake survived as she gets out of the car moments before in an attempt to retrieve a balloon. Yes. It’s as ridiculous to watch as it is to read. Throughout the series Drake has flashbacks to the balloon, very similar to Tyler’s flashbacks of a woman in red being chased through the forest. Do you see a pattern forming here? Admittedly – I didn’t see the final twist coming (which I won’t ruin for you), so the writers do earn some points there. Reluctantly.

All in all – the whole thing was so disappointing when you consider how brilliant Life On Mars was. If you’ve never seen the original you might enjoy this. But for everyone else, watch only with your standard for enjoyment set considerably lower.

Spangles. Bagpuss. Spacehoppers. Slade.  Rainbow. That episode of Grange Hill where Tucker did something.

All of these things, and so much more more besides, once seemed so nostalgically evocative, even as early as the mid-eighties (when ‘nostalgia’ supposedly began and ended with Jonathan Ross saying “cor them toy space rockets eh?”), but more recently have become like popular cultural Kryptonite. On the one hand, there was the endless parade of clip show talking heads who thought that simply ’remembering’ such things was enough to provoke a proustian rush of nostalgia for the days of Sam Tyler arguing with the BBC Schools Diamond, and those ringtone-toting Abba-endorsing ha-ha-Zippy-was-on-teh-drugs retrololz jerks who insist on turning everything into an unfunny ‘lewd’ observational joke, which was enough to make even the most tolerant and good-humoured enthusiast for all things vaguely Phantom Flan-Flinger-tinged start to think that Noddy Holder was becoming ever so slightly tedious a reference point. But on the other hand, when some of said enthusiasts started to wave a healthily tongue-in-cheek two fingers in the direction of Space Dust and its ilk, some others took the George Best-autographed ball and ran with it, adopting a militant stance that basically dictated that nobody was allowed to show affection for anything from the past unless they had obtained written permission and had refused to watch a South Bank Show on two people that they weren’t interested in discussing a subject that they didn’t understand but still got angry about it anyway.

And so everything fell into a kind of limbo, with poor old Bungle going undiscussed for fear of sparking off a wave of stupidity in both directions… and it’s time that we took them back. Reject those false prophets, and reject those false blokes-with-big-sunglasses-on-office-nights-out – let’s put lazy uncritical nostalgia back in centre stage, and indeed ‘Denim’, where it belongs. Starting today, Out On Blue Six officially launches The Humphrey Cushion ‘Remember Supermousse’ Campaign For Being Allowed To Talk About Spangles Again – watch this space for further developments, and for celebrity endorsements by the likes of Bawrence, Darren Grimley and TV Andrew Collins!

Everyone knows all about the much-lamented (especially by nutcases foaming at the mouth about how the ‘politically correct brigade : (‘ won’t let them use their hosepipe on their Benny Hill golliwogs because of something to do with LWT startup sequences) eccentricities of the erstwhile ITV regions – the Anglia Knight, the Yorkshire Chevron, the Thames Buildings-Rising-Out-Of-The-Water and, of course, the Granada Goose – but how many of you knew that back in the mists of time, the various BBC regions had their own examples of little-seen local lunacy? Well they did, and here are just a handful of those oddball idents and captions that you half remember seeing for a fraction of a second whilst visiting relatives who could only get BBC Middle Of Sodding Nowhere:

BBC South’s early efforts at establishing their own distinctive regional identity were hampered by subsidence and a general lack of imagination. Or was this simply a clever way of linking into some long-forgotten television adaptation of Victor Pemberton’s The Slide? A joke which only works if you conveniently forget about the existence of Doctor Who And The Fury From The Deep…

A couple of years later came this worryingly stentorian ‘Collapsed Department S’ logo, which would suggest all manner of clandestine governmental shenanigans if it wasn’t reassuringly rendered in the BBC’s early seventies colour of choice, ‘Sam Tyler Blue’.

BBC East Anglia, meanwhile, opted for this peculiar blend of Pyramid-Meets-The-Eye-style quasi-mysticism and ‘Here Be Pylons’ electricity board graphic design, coming up with something that looks so similar to the sort of insignia you might have seen in a black and white Doctor Who story that you can practically see Patrick Troughton running away going “oh my gobby gobstoppers, Jamie”.

BBC Midlands seems to have been the prime mover in this drive towards pointless regional rebranding, as they seemingly couldn’t stop plastering their own modifications all over standard BBC iconography. Here, for example, is a caption slide that nobody can think of an actual possible use for, which also seems to be plugging the not-yet-invented ITV2.

Oh, that crazy ‘MWMWMWM’ programme. It’s my favourite!

BBC Midlands viewers also had their weather updates enlivened by this cartoon cat and dog duo in full-on BBC Globe colour scheme. They’ll be up to some hi-jinks, I’ll be bound!

BBC Yorkshire will be having none of yer namby pamby Globe what they’re all wearing in the South now – instead, they’ve opted for a revolving Lower Half Of The Keep Britain Tidy Man.

BBC Northern Ireland celebrate Christmas 1987 with a revolving cake, as scoffed on Christmas Day by some broadcast engineers and TV ‘Clown’ (Test Card).

And, for the benefit of any ruralists looking in, here’s the Wicker Man-inspired clock they used to count down to Programmes For Schools And Colleges And MURDERS SCARECROWS.

…and finally, BBC Scotland do the only sensible thing and hammer the BBC Globe into an, erm, Cube. Sadly not as a prelude to a Michael Bentine repeat season.

I can’t wait for the new series of Ashes to Ashes, and can’t help but wonder if we might get the big reveal in this series, even though a third is slated.

If Philip Glenister sticks to his vow not to sign another contract beyond the third series, they might want to use this to tie in with the inevitable 90s revival due to kick off in 2010. That isn’t a complaint by the way, I’m a 90s girl. I would love to see Gene attempt to interact, perhaps relocated back to Manchester, with loved up ravers who refuse to fight back.

So, I believe we may find out what is ‘real’ and Alex’s fate at the end of the upcoming series. So what are the possible outcomes and reveals?

Tim Price wasn’t Alex’s biological father

I’ve long speculated that either Gene or Evan will be revealed as Alex’s dad. This was brought into focus by the fact that Tim Price was so willing to end her life along with his own and Caroline’s. If Tim is Alex’s father, I think at least, there will be a brother or sister she didn’t know about.

We already know that Caroline and Evan had an affair, who knows how far back that stretched? Is it the reason he got the job in their legal practice in the first place? Why was he at the prison on the day that Layton was released?

And then there’s Gene. He has a somewhat acidic relationship with Caroline. Why? Is it just a genuine mutual dislike due to their respective roles and beliefs or does it go deeper than that? Thin line between love and hate. Maybe we will find out that Caroline was located in Manchester at some point. I think Alex was eight years old in 1981, which means that she was born during Life on Mars, in 1973…

Alex’s fate is inextricably linked to Life on Mars

We know that a character from Life on Mars not featured in the first series will resurface in the second. Who? Smart money is probably on Annie. Is it possible that Sam will be revealed to be Alex’s real father? Could that be the reason that Annie didn’t relocate to London with the rest of the team, at the outset? What would that mean for her life back in 2008/9, given that he wasn’t ‘real’ in 1973?

And how would the writers explain all this without our heads exploding…

Molly’s dad has something to do with this

I can’t discount the mysterious Mr Drake.  We don’t know for sure that he is a similar age to Alex. Taking into account that they had a child 15 years later, when Alex was still in her early 20s, this might suggest he is already an adult in 1982. Alex may meet him and find out things she didn’t know about him the first time they met in the 90s.

Alex’s ex has been deliberately omitted from the story to date, much like Gene’s wife. I think we’ll find out more about both and it will be significant.

Someone else who isn’t from 1982

It could either be the new character, team recruit ‘Supermac’, or Shaz. But, series 2 episode summaries refer to a ‘mysterious stranger’ who knows that she is not from 1982. Assuming she has seen this person and not just received a letter from them - hey, it is 1982 - it can’t be Sam. She knows who Sam is as she was his psychologist upon his return.

Arthur Layton is not what he seems

Or rather, not just what he seems. In the first episode he is talking to someone on the phone who is part of Alex’s past. I’m assuming the person he is blackmailing is someone who knows that Tim commissioned the tape bomb, but has let Layton rot in jail for 27 years.

I can’t quite see Layton becoming a sympathetic character in any way, even if he does play a bigger role.  In Life on Mars, Sam came face to face with a criminal from 2008 and prevented him from carrying out future attacks by convincing everyone that he was insane. Could this character reappear, or the reverse scenario play itself out with Layton? If Layton is released in 1981 and stays out of prison, does that mean he has no need to shoot Alex in 2008?

Molly may not dictate the outcome

Most speculation has concluded that Alex must return to 2009 as she has a daughter. If Molly either joined her in 1982, went elsewhere herself or just wasn’t there anymore, this would be a way around it. Pesky kids, eh?

I will update as we go along…only12 days to go now!

Apparently the US Version of “Life On Mars” has concluded, and apparently it was decent enough. So no one tell me what happened or I’ll send you back 35 years!

Being in New Zealand and all, I have to wait you see. But was it Wizard of Oz or Jacob’s Ladder good?

LIFE ON MARS – “Tuesday’s Dead”

Sam Tyler finds it difficult to separate a life-and-death hostage situation taking place at County Hospital from his own strange circumstances. Stressed about a phone call where he seems to hear his mother’s voice -in 2008- begging him to wake up, he and the rest of the squad are ordered to diffuse a potentially explosive face-off in which a crazed gunman is trying to force a doctor to reverse a dangerous operation on the renegade’s brother.

Sam, Ray, Annie and Lt. Hunt are all targeted in the madman’s cross hairs, but as Sam and the 1-2-5 attempt to resolve the confrontation, he suddenly realizes that the clock ticking on the gunman’s demands parallels another deadline that could spell the end of Sam Tyler.

Dun Dun Dun…

Why does everything go back to Bowie? -Best Line Ever (besides every line of the spacecraft scene, of course.)

Did anyone see the ultimate ending to the series finale of Life on Mars coming at all?

I have to admit, I was completely blindsided, although I did certainly see hints within the final episode. (The astronaut line was so out of place, I thought it had to mean something, but I wasn’t sure what.)

Okay, so I’m not quite sure I didn’t like it, and I certainly think it was a good call to stray from the coma premise of the original series, but a few things don’t quite fit.

My biggest issue, is the overall goal of Sam’s journey was his father – Vic. Aka Gene Hunt… kind of. It made total and complete sense to reveal that Sam cast his father in the role of Gene Hunt. Gene, after all, serves as a tough love sort of father figure for Sam, both in the U.S. and original BBC version. It was a great reveal.

But I feel as though daddy issues weren’t that big of a focus throughout the series. While I would not have wanted to be hammered with them, a more consistent presence of the theme coould have been nice. That being said, I do think it’s important to understand the bizarre circumstances of the cancellation. And I’m glad that the series had the chance to tie up loose ends.

So what of Annie? Was any of it real? Was Sam’s sleep state constructed completely by him, and thus only representative of a latent attraction, or is there romance between the two?

Overall, I liked the BBC finale. You can’t really get better than Simm’s Tyler jumping off the roof. But I would have been disappointed if the American version had taken it. I’m pleased that the US scribes did something completely original.

I would have loved to have seen the reaction on the actors’ faces when they were given the scripts for the final scene. Personally, I stared at my television with my mouth wide open long past the end credits.

It may take me a few days to formulate my full thoughts on the finale. What I do know: I’ll miss seeing this great ensemble on television.

The series finale of Life on Mars was one of the best series finales EVER.

The whole series we’ve been guessing how Sam would get back to 2008 – in fact he never did.

The whole thing was a trip – Project Aries and Aries Toy Company- to Mars. Life on Mars indeed.

Gene Hunt – was really the name of the mars mission – the man is Major Tom and he is Sam’s father …AMAZING.

Windy – Sam’s neighbor is really the ships computer!

The whole show was a sleeping dream while on route to Mars – WOW.

Of all the possibilities this was not one that we had ever thought of. Life on Mars wasn’t just a David Bowie song it was the mission.

This is one finale that made sense – it pulled together the entire show and wrapped it in a way that made us feel satisfied.

This show should have gone longer – but here we are. Tonight is the final episode of Life on Mars!!

Will Sam make it home to 2009?

What was this whole show anyways? Time travel? A coma? A bad dream?

We’ll find out. For sure it has to do with Project Aries, which we saw again in last week’s episode with the Aries Toy company.

Whatever the finale – this has been a great show and it’s a shame to see it go so soon.

This was a weird episode – Sam tracks down the Aries Toy company – an obvious connection to Project Aries which is the reason why sam is in 1973 right?

The toy company had mars pathfinder toys – obviously something that didn’t belon in 1973.

The FBI agent clearly new everything – and at one point I was thinking maybe this is the final episode…but no we end up with what…more confusion..

I really hope that whatever Project Aries makes sense – it sure would suck to have a Lame ending like Battlestar Galactica

LIFE ON MARS: 1.14 “Coffee, Tea, or Annie” was a another great episode…why did the Stew look like annie? 

Was it part of project Aries?

And how did she end up on the cover of the magazine?

We still have no idea how sam got stuck in the past but with 4 episode left until the show is cancelled hopefully we find out soon.

Juste un petit billet sur une autre série que j’aime énormément: “Life On Mars” (qui n’a rien à voir avec Marvin le Martien).

Le pitch: Sam Tyler est commissaire principal à Manchester en 2006. Il vient d’apprendre que sa fiancée a été enlevée par un tueur en série. C’est à ce moment que BAAAM ! Sam est fauché par une voiture et se réveille… en 1973. Une époque où les ordinateurs portables et les téléphones mobiles n’ont pas encore été inventés où on se trimbale la cope au bec avec les rouflaquettes et les pat’def… Un passé où il est retrogradé inspecteur sous les ordres du chef Gene Hunt, un personnage au méthodes brutales et au charisme flamboyant. Tyler va prouver sa valeur en démêlant des enquêtes policières à l’aide de méthodes « modernes ». Dans le même temps, il va essayer de comprendre ce qui lui arrive… Est-il mort, dans le coma, ou est-il vraiment dans le passé ? Faut il qu’il meurt pour sortir de son coma ? (Comme dans “Ouvre Les Yeux” — “Abre Los Ojos” réalisé par Alejandro Amenábar, film qui beaucoup inspiré “The Matrix”…)

Faut il en finir avant le 16ème épisode ?

“Life on Mars”, c’est la chanson de David Bowie qu’écoute sur son autoradio Sam Tyler au moment de son accident. Elle passe aussi sur l’autoradio de sa Rover lorsqu’il atterrit en 1973. C’est une chanson qui est a une histoire particulière. A la base, David Bowie devait écrire les paroles de la chanson de Claude François “Comme d’Habitude” mais la maison de disque va lui préférer la version de Paul Anka “My Way” qui sera chantée finalement par Franck Sinatra. De colère, David Bowie a pris les mêmes accords (à part le refrain) et a créé sa propre version: “Life On Mars”. Une chanson aux paroles poétiques mais totalement énigmatiques.

La série devait s’appeler “Ford Granada” et a été proposée à la BBC en 1998 sans succès. Les auteurs, Matthew Graham et Tony Jordan, voulaient avant tout créer un Buddy Movie avec un flic du présent et un policier du passé, afin de confronter leurs méthodes et le politiquement correct des deux époques.

La série ne comptera finalement que deux saisons. Cette décision n’est pas issue de problèmes d’audience de la série – justement très élevée – mais de la volonté des créateurs de la série d’arrêter après seize épisodes, estimant que c’était une durée suffisante pour raconter les histoires qu’ils souhaitaient raconter. Gage encore d’une qualité dans la création et la production de ce petit bijou servi par une bande originale mèlant des hits à des raretés… nostalgie nostalgie !
Donc au bout de 16 épisodes vous savez ce qui est arrivé à Sam. Et même mieux, une suite est lancée “Ashes To Ashes” se passant dans les années 80, apportant de nouveaux éclairages sur ce qui est arrivé à Sam de 1973 à 1980. C’est une héroïne de 2008, cette fois ci, qui va découvrir le monde et l’équipe de Gene Hunt, à Londres cette fois ci…
Gene Hunt est joué par Philip Glenister, et c’est la véritable Diva de la série. Oubliez le politiquement correct de nos années gores mais policées. Gene rentre dans le lard de tout le monde mais il fait avec panache ! (En V.O.: An overweight, over the hill, tobacco-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding. )

“Life on Mars” a eu un tel succès en Angleterre que des producteurs américains en ont fait un remake (avec Harvey Keitel dans le rôle de Gene). Et c’est là ou cela devient très intéressant. Que faut il garder dans l’histoire, qu’est ce qui est trop typé “UK” ? DOnc on a la chance de suivre une excellente série de la BBC et puis son verbatim sur ABC avec la possibilité de plus gros budgets. Comme Sam, qui découvre qu’il est bien en 1973 à son réveil dans le terrain vague en apercevant à l’horizon les Tours Jumelles flambantes… neuves. Une image très forte.

Je vous invite donc à découvrir cette extraordinaire série dans ses deux versions UK & US de préférence en english sous titré !

Nemo Sandman

BAD news for fans of the American version of the BBC hit Life On Mars. US network ABC have announced that they are cancelling the show and it won’t be back for a second season. Which is a shame because against all odds, it was actually a pretty good translation.

The good news is that the producers have been given enough notice to give the show a proper finale that wraps up the story - and the network has confirmed that new episodes will continue to air as scheduled, rather than being shelved indefinitely (the show airs in the US on Wednesday nights after Lostbut has been unable to hang on to enough of that show’s large lead-in audience to satisfy the moneymen).

It means that viewers will soon find out why and how the US Sam Tyler (played by Irishman Jason O’Mara) was transported back to 1973 New York, rather than leave them in limbo wondering what was going on.

As the Choob has previously reported, the US producers had already made it clear that the ultimate explanation for Sam’s temporal displacement would be different from the ending of the BBC show. All will be revealed when the final episode airs on May 1.

In related news, Gretchen Mol, who plays WPC Annie Norris (above, far right) in the US Life On Mars, is said to be in talks to join the cast of the Witches Of Eastwick TV show pilot.

BETTER news for Heroes fans. As expected, despite sliding ratings, NBC has officially confirmed that the show will return for a fourth season later this year. However, there are rumours that talks are now underway to set a definite end date for the show to wrap up.

BUDGET cuts that had threatened to prevent The Sarah Silverman Program returning to Comedy Central for a third season have been resolved.

Silverman, right, and the show’s other producers had been reluctant to accept a lower budget on the grounds it would affect the quality of the show.

However, a new, 10-episode season has now been ordered after sister network Logo, which targets lesbian and gay viewers, stepped in to plug the financial gap.

THE BBC has ordered a third season of period drama Lark Rise To Candleford. It will be filmed this summer and is due to be broadcast early next year.