Life on Mars - Complete BBC Series 1-2 (New Packaging) [DVD]

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Life on Mars follows Sam Tyler ( John Simm), a policeman in service with the Greater Manchester Police (GMP). The only way they could be the same is if the Frank Morgan in 1973 is the real one, and Sam is hallucinating the future doctor. That doesn’t happen so much now, with adverts ruling the airwaves, and shows edited down to just forty minutes per hour of television. For example, when Sam first awakes to find himself in 1973, there's a billboard advertising "the highway in the sky". After being hit by a car in 2006, Sam mysteriously awakens in 1973; he finds himself working for the predecessor of the GMP, the Manchester and Salford Police, at the same location as in 2006.

In several episodes, Gene Hunt adopts the name "Gene Genie", in reference to yet another Bowie song, " The Jean Genie", used in the fourth episode. His girlfriend/work partner Maya (recurring Lisa Bonet of "The Cosby Show") is his (and our) connection to his world, always inspiring a reunion that seems distant and, by the nature of the series, improbable.Non-linearly, an internal investigation looks for a connection between Ray's petty younger brother (Eric Balfour), a robbed Wall Street philanthropist (Kevin Conway), two ornate beheadings, and Tyler's secret discovery. Last year however, I got the urge to watch it again, and to my surprise it wasn’t on any of the TV channels. Chris, in contrast, becomes friendly with Sam and respects his modern methods, finding his loyalty torn between Gene and Sam.

Life on Mars comes with a bevy of special features, but surprisingly, most of them concern Series 1. It’s clear and sharp on these DVDs, and with just two episodes per disc, there’s not much in the way of compression artefacts and very little aliasing to worry about. It's brilliantly done, as is the way the series shows Sam despirately trying to cope with the completely non-PC style of policing of the time and a completely different kind of life in 1973. If you're listening to the commentaries while moving through the series for the first time, do know they do occasionally touch upon (if not quite spoiling) the finale.In the final episode of "Ashes to Ashes" a fuller explanation for Sam Tyler's experience is provided, when the role of Gene Hunt in both Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes is revealed. But at the time, I did file it away under ‘event TV’, the kind of show that you only need to watch once, as the second time it will lose its impact. It's vastly enjoyable and manages to stay just about believable thanks to some strong writing and, of course, the two marvellous central performances".

He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me , the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her , and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?

From what I can see with the aid of Google, eight songs (including four by Deep Purple and one by The Rolling Stones) were replaced for Season 1 and two songs for Season 2. It’s one of those inspired moments in television, a collision of two genres, a police procedural and a supernatural/sci-fi mystery. In practice, it makes for a thumpingly enjoyable piece of television — not least because everybody involved was obviously having such a great time". There are some faults to be found--the colors are a little off, there is some minor problems with resolution--but overall this is a fairly good presentation of a recent television program. The series eventually attracted the attention of BBC Wales' Julie Gardner, who persuaded BBC Head of Drama Jane Tranter to commission the programme from BBC Wales for BBC One.

There are enough extra features to satisfy the fans of the show and give some great insight on production, writing and filming the show. Life on Mars: The Complete Series is a combined repackaging of the earlier Series 1 and Series 2 sets released by Acorn; if you have those there’s no need to upgrade, but if you don’t, this has the whole show in one complete package.

You can imagine when I saw an episode of this BBC TV programme some 30 years after Bowie performed the song. He wakes up in 1973, as a Detective Inspector newly assigned to Manchester CID from Hyde, and finding that he now has to work with a wholly unreconstructed masculine Detective Chief Inspector in the form of Gene Hunt, in a department rife with misogyny, petty corruption, a disregard for paperwork and red tape, and reeking of cigarette smoke and cheap aftershave. We also sell a wide range of refurbished Mobile Phones and Tech from major brands like Apple, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and much more. A third series entitled Lazarus (again a David Bowie song) was announced in 2020, but its development was cancelled in 2023. If you have any regard for the series up to that point, you'll probably want to forget what serves to undermine all the fine ideas and engaging drama that preceded it.