Life on Mars

The British are very good at making good TV shows.  Their secret is simple.  They have good writers with 2 restrictions.  They first of all must write as if this is the show's one and only season.  Secondly their shows only go for 6 or so episodes.  On top of their restrictions most of their shows are paid for by the people so they are not bounded to appealing to commercial support and are free to to what ever their imagination leads them to do. 

Actor, John Simm, heads this cast as Sam Tyler, a police detective investigating a serial killer in 2006.  After a really rough day where his latest lead on the serial killer case fails to produce the killer and instead puts his partner and girlfriend in the clutches of the killer himself, he is unexpectedly hit by a car.  Sam wakes up to a totally different life.  He still is Sam Tyler and he is still a detective but he is now in 1973.  Sam must now investigate major crimes the old fashion way under a corrupt but well meaning police department that resorts to heavy handed tactics to score convictions.

Though a simple premise with sci-fi plot devices, what makes Life on Mars remarkable is the emotionally believable performance of John Simm as he plays a character unsure of what is real and what is not.  John occasionally goes through a psychotic like episodes where he hears what could be interpreted as the dialogue that goes on over his comatose body in 2006.  The audience is never totally sure either but we are lead to believe that Sam Tyler in 2006 is in a comatose state while his conscience is trapped in a made up 1973 world. 

Life on Mars was as well brought to over to North America as an American revision of the show.  Although the American version is well casted with even Harvey Keitel as Sam Tyler's boss I found the American version focused more on the ridiculousness of Sam's situation than his panic in trying to get back to the life he does know.  Not to say that the American series is bad but John Simm's manic performance to me was well worth watching the UK version of Life on Mars.