Review: Life on Mars (UK) – Season 1, Episode 2

All TV series or movies set in the ’60s and ’70s have two things in common: they make fun of the clothes, and they dig the music. After a “Previously on” and an introductory scene, the second episode of Life on Mars gives us a chase for a criminal where everyone wears less-than-flattering swimwear (psychedelic trunks so tight you can… you get the idea), set to Paul McCartney and the Wings’ “Live and Let Die”. Makes you glad you don’t live in the past – but you can always buy the CDs!

Sam Tyler’s still confused. Is he in a coma? Is he mad? Is he stuck in the past? The motif doesn’t develop much, but the series is wise enough to move on quickly to more interesting things. The betrunked bad guy, Kim Trent, is interrogated by Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt, and while it’s very clear that he’s up to no good, it’s equally clear that they haven’t got any hard evidence, just gut feeling. While Sam wants to go by the book, and the 2003 book at that, Gene has a more creative approach: he plants evidence, which backfires. Trent calls their bluff and after Sam makes it very clear that there won’t be any more evidence planting while he’s around, they’re forced to let the man go.

Which backfires even more badly, of course, as later on Trent’s gang robs a jeweller and a masked villain – Trent himself, most likely – shoots and almost kills a woman, one of the cleaners at the police station. And Gene blames Sam – who knows he did the right thing, but isn’t far behind the Mancunian Dirty Harry when it comes to blame himself… but just when things get too heavy, too serious, the episode lightens up with a hospital punch-up between Sam and Gene, set to ’70s rock. Reminding us that the series is often at its best when it’s fun, not when it’s morose or trying hard to be ominous. Even if the fun is of the “Oh, ‘e ‘it’ im in the noggin!” sort.

Of course, fifteen minutes later the shoe’s on the other foot. They’ve found a witness to the robbery and shooting, but since he was threatened by the bad guys he’s scared. Sam orders police protection, which Gene sees as overdoing it – so when Sam’s hunch turns out to be right and Trent’s gang goes after the witness, two thirds of the police protection are down the pub playing darts with Hunt.

As Sam and Co. go after Trent, we’re treated to a cat-and-mouse sequence in an industrial quarter, which highlights that while Life on Mars is good with the humour, banter and inter-personal relationships, its action sequences are often generic if competent. (When was the last time a TV chase sequence was truly thrilling?) It’s not when cops and criminals clash with guns and fists that the series works best: it’s when middle-aged sarcastic coppers run after the bad guys wearing psychedelic swimming trunk while vintage ’70s rock is playing at top volume, or when the ’70s and 21st century views on policing clash in weird and wonderful ways. At its strongest, Life on Mars is really a Mancunian, time-travelling The Odd Couple. The policing’s just the parsley.