Farewell to Life On Mars
Thursday, April 2, 2009

Well last night was the series finale of Life On Mars a very intelligent well crafted piece of escapism that of course was doomed to cancellation. I guess it wasn't lame enough for ABC or enough viewers of the usual recycled reality programming. The show centered around Sam Tyler a cop from 2008 that was ran down by a car and woke up in 1973. Same premise as it's English counterpart which was also pretty good by the way only a lot more less filtered from profanity and sexual subjects. Those English really don't hold back anything. The American version was a lot more safer for general audiences, and in the end I think I have to give it a higher ranking. The ending made a lot more sense and even if it wasn't the greatest shocker of all time the ending of the series was sufficiently pleasing to warrant watching the entire series all over again. I hate to re-watch any series or movie with a sucky ending. The ending fit the theme of the series. I don't want to give anything away so I'll just recommend you get the DVD set and watch it yourself.



Life on Mars DVD info

Buy Life On Mars from Amazon Now

Strong points of the series include great acting, great stories, some of which were recycled from the original British version but Americanized. It was worth watching to see the set pieces alone. It's like re-entering the early 70's, but with the pace of a modern show. A lot of detail went into this show. Old apartments that looked like they had came from the 50's but were rundown and a lot of stuff was rundown and old in the 70's. The only thing I noticed were some of the old classic cars always looked a bit too clean as if they were show cars even the police cars. I'm certainly not going to complain too much some of those old muscle cars they had on this show were a pleasure to see.

Like Detective Ray Carling's GTO was awesome to behold. Below is the not pic from the show but it's reasonably close in appearance to Carling's ride.


Sam Tyler's Chevy SS wasn't bad either.

It's sad to see this series go. It really is because it did what so few shows these days do. It sucked you into a world where you can never go into. You might have been there back in the 70's, minus the sci-fi elements of course, but you never will again.

At least I can give ABC one bit of credit. At least they allowed the creators time to craft a fitting ending instead of killing it mid-story line. I hope that at least becomes a trend in broadcast television.