If it wasn’t for weird little girls and voices on the radio calling him back home to the 21st century, Sam Tyler would probably be relatively okay in the ’70s. It’s exciting yet simple in ways that his previous life wasn’t – and he definitely looks better in period garb than he did in his drab clothes in the pilot episode before he woke up in the past. The ’70s (as imagined by TV series) may be sexist, racist and practically Neanderthal in many ways, but my, are they cool. But the uncanny call-backs from his present always throw him for a loop. He wants to go back after all, doesn’t he?
So when Sam is called to a crime scene in a textile mill that, thirty years later, would be transformed into the hip flats where he’d live, it throws him. Here’s a bloodied corpse, right where his kitchen table would be in a few decades’ time. (It’s strange how he says all of these things quite explicitly in front of Gene & Co. – the series is somewhat undecided in terms of how much Sam treats the past as unreal.)
Saunders, the man killed at the factory, the police find out, was less than liked by the workers loyal to the unions. This is, after all, England in the ’70s, and for all the cool rock music and flared trousers, it’s a time of social unrest and jobs being lost to modernisation. A new loom, the factory foreman says, can do the work of three men. Robots are worse than immigrants, in the eyes of the workers.
Gene has a pretty good idea of whodunnit. A union man with an axe to grind and, according to old copper wisdom, the first man to talk is the killer. In this case it’s Ted Bannister, an old Labour man to the bone, the kind of person who would burst a capillary if he lived to see Blair’s New Labour. A “Commie bastard”, in Hunt’s ever so slightly reactionary words.
Except – surprise, surprise – Sam argues that it’s police work rather than gut feelings and political resentment that will solve the murder. Bannister, an old, less than fit man, is an unlikely suspect. It doesn’t exactly help, though, that everyone at the mill hated the murder victim, by all accounts a smug pragmatist who could see the way things were going. A scab, in other words.
Hunt’s imagination goes into overdrive. When Sam mentions that the wound suggests that a large blade was used, his first thought is of the Sikh immigrants working at the factory. Bannister could’ve stolen one of their ceremonial daggers, couldn’t he? (Of course, Hunt’s idea is still less offensive than Ray’s, whose comment makes Gene pretty much look like a progressive.)
While the dagger idea proves to be a non-lead, more and more evidence turned up by Tyler’s more scientific policing points at Bannister, the apparent smoking gun being a bloody shoeprint on the factory floor matched by Bannister’s shoes. The man doesn’t exactly make things any better for himself, pretty much spouting party lines – “We need to fight shoulder to shoulder” – in the interrogation room and then, when Hunt makes it clear that the mill will stay shut until the case is closed, makes a confession that’s stronger on desperation than on actual details.
Of course, Sam’s stubbornness is just the flipside of Hunt’s instinct. We know he’ll end up being right in the end, but his insistence on Bannister’s innocence is as much based on him not wanting the Guv to be right as it is based on actual evidence. Gene Hunt’s pretty much his antithesis – loud, brash, anti-intellectual – and admitting to Hunt having a point would hurt his pride like hell. If a freak transporter accident (hey, if you can wake up in the past, why not this?) could fuse the two coppers into one body, what a copper the result would be.
Sam’s got a gut feeling of his own, though: Bannister’s confessed because he’s protecting another man, in this case his son Derek. But the clashing egos of Tyler and Hunt mean that they miss the essential bit of the puzzle. And the little spooky test-card girl that keeps appearing to Sam, telling him to “Just… sleep… forever” (she probably went on to a lucrative role in Stanley Kubrick’s Shining with her twin sister) doesn’t exactly help. It’s only when the time of death proves that neither Ted nor Derek Bannister could have killed the victim that the penny drops. In an ironic twist, Saunders was killed by the machine that was going to replace two out of three men at the factory. Progress killed the factory worker, pretty much the same way video killed the radio star. Except with more blood and less eyeliner.
But, with ten minutes left in the episode, it’s clear that the story isn’t over. Derek hasn’t killed anyone, but he’s seen the writing on the wall: the factory’s going to lay off two thirds of its workforce. Social security? That’s for sissies from the future. ’70s men do it the manly way, by getting a bunch of shotguns, breaking in at the textile mill and stealing the salaries. Entrepreneurial, sure, but it almost ends in Sam getting his head blown off, point blank, by Derek Bannister, before he’s saved by Hunt’s willingness to shoot rather than ask questions. And the men begrudgingly admit that either one was both wrong and right. Cue some righteous, celebratory drinking down the pub.
After the second episode of Life on Mars was pretty much a fun romp, episode 3 is a much darker affair. Relatively little is played for laughs, which makes for a nice change. There’s only so much “fish out of water” comedy the series can do with before it gets repetitive. It also does something new with Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler, making both of them realise that they’re at their best when they complement each other. It may not be the most original character development, but it works.
Related posts:
Matt K. is a survivor of academia. He's fanatical about good TV and movies. He lives in Switzerland, which means that he gets his chosen drug mostly in the form of boxed DVD sets. You can read more of his musings on TV, life, movies, books and video games at http:\\goofybeast.wordpress.com.