Life on Mars (U.S. TV series)

Life on Mars
Genre Time travel
Police procedural
Created by Original series:
Matthew Graham
Tony Jordan
Ashley Pharoah
Developed by Josh Appelbaum
Andre Nemec
Scott Rosenberg
Starring Jason O'Mara
Harvey Keitel
Jonathan Murphy
Michael Imperioli
Gretchen Mol
Composer(s) Peter Nashel
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 17 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Josh Appelbaum
Andre Nemec
Scott Rosenberg
Jane Featherstone
Stephen Garrett
Producer(s) Jane Raab
Running time 43 minutes
Production company(s) Kudos Film and Television
Space Floor Television
ABC Studios
20th Century Fox Television
Distributor Disney–ABC Domestic Television (USA)
20th Television (non-USA)
Release
Original network ABC
Picture format 16:9 HDTV 1080i
Audio format 5.1 Surround Sound
Original release October 9, 2008 (2008-10-09) – April 1, 2009 (2009-04-01)
Chronology
Related shows Life on Mars (UK)
La Chica de Ayer
Обратная сторона Луны

Life on Mars is an American science fiction crime drama television series which originally aired on ABC from October 9, 2008 to April 1, 2009. It is an adaptation of the BAFTA-winning original UK series of the same name produced by the BBC. The series was co-produced by Kudos Film and Television, 20th Century Fox Television, and ABC Studios.

The series tells the story of New York City police detective Sam Tyler (played by Jason O'Mara), who, after being struck by a car in 2008, regains consciousness in 1973. Fringing between multiple genres, including thriller, science fiction and police procedural, the series remained ambiguous regarding its central plot, with the character himself unsure about his situation.[1] The series also starred Harvey Keitel, Jonathan Murphy, Michael Imperioli, and Gretchen Mol.

Life on Mars garnered critical praise for its premise, acting, and depiction of the 1970s but shortly after its premiere, the show's momentum was interrupted by a two-month hiatus followed by a timeslot change which led to a decline in viewership.[2][3] On March 2, 2009 ABC announced that it would not be ordering a second season. A DVD set of the complete series was released on September 29, 2009.

Production

David E. Kelley was the initial writer and executive producer of the series pilot,[4] but later handed over production responsibilities to others.[5] The executive producers of the show were Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec, and Scott Rosenberg, the producers of the ABC drama October Road.[6]

After reviewing the pilot episode, ABC ordered an overhaul. Several members of the cast and crew were replaced, with production moved from Los Angeles to New York to allow producers to take advantage of recently enacted local and state tax credits for shows filmed in that state.[7] The setting of the series was also changed from Los Angeles to New York, taking place at the fictional 125th precinct of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

The script was rewritten, with permission of the original creators, to remove the "unsatisfying" ambiguity of Sam's story in favor of a "mythological element" and "deeper mystery".[8]

The series premiered in North America on October 9, 2008, on ABC, following Grey's Anatomy.[9] Internationally, it also aired on Global in Canada, on FX in the UK, and on Network Ten in Australia.[10] On November 20, 2008, ABC ordered four additional episodes to the show's original thirteen episodes. After its winter hiatus, the series was shifted to a Wednesday night timeslot on January 28, 2009, following Lost.[11]

On March 2, 2009, it was announced that ABC would not be ordering a second season. The cancellation decision came early enough to allow producers time to wrap up the show's storyline. The network aired all 17 episodes ordered, with the final episode airing April 1, 2009.[12]

Cast and characters

Main characters

Producers Josh Appelbaum (left) and André Nemec (center) talk with actor Jason O'Mara (right), at Comic Con.

Minor characters

Synopsis

The series centers around Detective Sam Tyler, assigned to the 125th Precinct Detective Squad of the New York City Police Department.

At the show's outset in 2008, he cohabits with his girlfriend who is also his NYPD assigned partner, Detective Maya Daniels. Maya, to Tyler's horror, is kidnapped by a murderer they are investigating. While responding to a radio call as he crosses the street, Tyler is distracted and hit by another responding speeding police car. He regains consciousness in the same spot in the year 1973, dressed in period civilian attire, carrying a period-accurate identity card with his badge, and equipped with a vintage automobile, a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle — and, astonishingly, he's parked within sight of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He returns to his precinct house to find an unfamiliar early-1970s police squad, with contemporary equipment and culture which he likens to finding himself on a different planet. However, the detectives have been expecting him, thinking that he is a transfer from a place called "Hyde". His disorientation and frequent reference to things from the future brand him as eccentric, being labeled with the nickname "Spaceman", but he becomes a valued member of the squad.

Later on in the series, with Sam supposedly in a coma in 2008, Maya decided to end the relationship.

Several of the show's plots involve Sam looking into earlier versions of his cases from 2008, such as in "Out Here in the Fields" where he discovers the sociopath mentor of a future serial killer, and in "The Simple Secret of the Note in Us All" where Sam has the opportunity to stop a serial killer early in his career. Additional storylines are driven by the conflict between Sam's 2008 values and the more corrupt, almost vigilante-style policing of the era he finds himself in, while others are driven by Sam's discovery of more personal information about his past in this era that radically reshapes his understanding of the life he's left behind. He engages in an ongoing struggle to figure out what has happened to him, torn between his developing relationships in 1973 and his desire to return to 2008.

His 2008 reality frequently intrudes into 1973 through surreal, anachronistic visions and cryptic telephone calls. In one episode he sees a man in a nightclub wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, in several early episodes he sees the face of George W. Bush on the front page of the newspaper, and he frequently sees Mars rover robots following him or attempting to enter his body.

At other times, he also hints at his knowledge of the future to his colleagues; in a discussion of then-President Richard Nixon he confuses them by asserting that Nixon won't be in office much longer, he makes a veiled allusion to the September 11 attacks when advising them against engaging in hate speech, and he uses then-future cultural references as undercover pseudonyms — sometimes giving his name as "Luke Skywalker", "Tom Cruise" or "Sam Bono", and giving Gene and a female companion the undercover names "George and Laura Bush".

At the end of the series, it is revealed that Tyler's 2008 and 1973 realities were both fictitious, created by the onboard computer of a spacecraft that is carrying Tyler, Hunt, Norris, Carling, and Skelton on the first ever manned mission to the planet Mars, in 2035. The crew he worked with in 1973 were just virtual reality versions of his fellow spaceship crewmembers. His room number, "2B", is his sleeping unit; his old precinct, "Hyde", and his new precinct, the "125", are based on the name of the spacecraft — "Hyde 125"; his neighbor, Windy, is the name of the computer A.I.; Frank Morgan, an FBI agent in the series, is the Mission Control flight director; in a reversal from her struggle to be taken seriously as a police officer in 1973, Annie Norris is the ship's commander. To sustain the crew, their minds were routinely kept active while asleep using virtual reality "neural stimulation" programs of their own choosing, but Sam's choice of a scenario where he was a police officer c. 2008 was abruptly changed to a 1973 setting by a computer glitch induced by a meteor-storm. The identity of Maya in 2035, however, is left unexplained. In a twist, Gene Hunt in 1973 turns out to be astronaut 'Major Tom' Tyler — Sam's father — in the conclusion. Just as Maria was estranged from Gene in 1973, Sam was estranged from his father until the very end of the series, when he reconciles with his dad before they step out onto the bare ground of the Red Planet. However the final shot shows, not an astronaut boot, but Gene Hunt's signature white loafer taking the first step onto the martian surface, casting doubt once again onto the ending.

Recurring themes

Matthew Graham comments

In a UK interview with SFX, Matthew Graham—co-creator of the original Life on Mars—was asked his opinion on the US remake. His opinion was "Have you seen it? It beggars belief, doesn't it?" He goes on to speak of how he discussed future Ashes to Ashes endings and theories with the US team, stating they thought the UK ending "wasn't extreme enough". He spoke of how strong endings should be there for the viewer to work out, whereas the US ending was like "coming up with something and going 'Hey-hey, you never knew this, but Gene is a Martian!'", which he felt was a mistake.[15]

U.S. ratings

# Episode Rating Share Rating/Share
(18—49)
Viewers
(millions)
Rank
(night)
Rank
(week)
Air date
(m/d/y)
1 "Out Here in the Fields"[16] 8.2 14 3.8/10 11.33 #3 #15 (tied) 10/9/2008
2 "The Real Adventures of the Unreal Sam Tyler" 5.7 10 2.7/7 8.47 #8 TBD 10/16/2008
3 "My Maharishi is Bigger Than Your Maharishi"[17] TBD 9 2.5/7 8.06 #11 TBD 10/23/2008
4 "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadows?"[18] 5.7 10 2.7/8 8.41 #8 TBD 10/30/2008
5 "Things to Do in New York When You Think You're Dead"[19] 6.0 10 3.0/8 9.62 #8 TBD 11/6/2008
6 "Tuesday's Dead"[20] 6.0 10 2.9/8 8.94 #8 TBD 11/13/2008
7 "The Man Who Sold the World"[21] 5.3 9 2.6/7 7.97 #9 TBD 11/20/2008
8 "Take a Look at the Lawmen" 4.0 7 2.3/6 8.89 #7 TBD 1/28/2009
9 "The Dark Side of the Mook"[22] 3.7 6 2.3/5 6.02 #5 TBD 2/4/2009
10 "Let All the Children Boogie"[23] 3.0 5 2.0/6 5.14 TBD TBD 2/11/2009
11 "Home is Where You Hang Your Holster"[24] 3.5 6 2.1/6 5.78 #7 TBD 2/18/2009
12 "The Simple Secret of The Note In Us All" 3.2 5 2.0/6 5.55 #8 TBD 2/25/2009
13 "Revenge of Broken Jaw" 3.5 6 2.1/6 5.66 #6 TBD 3/4/2009
14 "Coffee, Tea, or Annie"[25] 3.0 4 1.5/4 4.58 #13 TBD 3/11/2009
15 "All the Young Dudes"[26] 3.3 6 2.0/6 5.27 #11 TBD 3/18/2009
16 "Everyone Knows It's Windy"[27] 3.5 6 2.1/6 5.67 #8 TBD 3/25/2009
17 "Life Is a Rock"[28] 3.6 6 2.1/6 5.86 #7 TBD 4/1/2009

International distribution

Country Channel Premiere date
 Australia Network Ten 5 February 2009
 Germany RTL Crime 14 May 2014
 Lithuania TV3 Lithuania
TV6 Lithuania
7 November 2011
30 December 2011
 Latvia TV3+ 5 January 2012
 Netherlands RTL7 17 April 2012
 United Kingdom
 Ireland
Fox 9 October 2009
 South Africa Action X

References

  1. Matthew Gilbert (2008-10-09). "Time warp twists a police procedural". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  2. Alessandra Stanley (2008-10-08). "Imports Suffering Identity Problems". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  3. Dorothy Rabinowitz (2008-10-31). "Out in the Past". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  4. Deans, Jason (2006-03-28). "Life on Mars goes stateside" (Requires free registration). Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2006-03-28.
  5. Steinberg, Jacques; Elliott, Stuart (2008-05-13). "ABC Fall Roster Is Heavy on the Already Proven". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
  6. "Life on Mars — Fall Schedule". ABC.com. Archived from the original on September 15, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  7. "Hollywood Productions Moving East". IMDb News. 2008-06-03. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  8. "Life on Mars remake changes Tyler's story". Digital Spy. 2008-07-19. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  9. Schneider, Michael (2008-05-13). "ABC announces fall schedule". Variety. Retrieved 2008-05-13.
  10. "Global's Fall Schedule: Spies, Time-Travel and Spoiled Teens". Dose.ca. Retrieved 2008-05-04.
  11. Kevin McDonough (United Media) (2009-01-28). "TUNE IN TONIGHT: 'Mars' hopes to survive the New York competition". Reading Eagle. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  12. "Life on Mars canceled". TV Series Finale. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
  13. Tyler's rank is stated by a jealous Ray Carling in Episode 1.
  14. Jersild, Sarah (March 25, 2009). "Life on Mars: Friend or figment?". Retrieved 2009-03-30.
  15. "Ashes Exclusive". SFX Magazine. 2010-05-22. Archived from the original on 2010-05-26. Retrieved 2010-10-26.
  16. Cf. line "Out here in the fields" from song "Baba O'Riley".
  17. Cf. phrase "My Dad is bigger than your Dad" used by boys.
  18. Cf. song "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?".
  19. Cf. song "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead".
  20. Cf. song "Tuesday's Dead".
  21. Cf. song "The Man Who Sold the World".
  22. Cf. album "The Dark Side of the Moon".
  23. Cf. line "Let all the children boogie" from song "Starman".
  24. Cf. expression "Home is where you hang your hat".
  25. Cf. book "Coffee, Tea or Me?".
  26. Cf. song "All the Young Dudes".
  27. Cf. line "Everyone knows it's Windy" from song "Windy".
  28. Cf. song "Life Is a Rock".
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.