69 posts tagged “1973”

I never realized that these two characters were played by the same actor—and I have extra admiration for him as a result. I’d seen a few of Ralph Brown’s work of late but never know I was watching the same actor in some of his earlier works.
   First, DCI Frank Morgan from Life on Mars:

Spoilers ahead. [PS.: in fact, if you scroll down and don’t want to know, be warned: there are humungous pictures from the last episode. So shut your eyes as you scroll.]
   Well, I was totally wrong about why American Sam Tyler got to 1973.
   But when they showed the scene of Sam waking up, I instantly figured it out what had happened and was right. I guess this particular outcome must have been at the back of my mind if I could see it all in a second. A few weeks ago, my father did say, ‘He better not have been dreaming for the whole series.’ Sorry, Dad.
   No, I didn’t think it was a good ending. At least not when compared with the original. I expected something much cleverer, more mythological.
   There were some cheeky aspects to it, with the ‘Special Guest Star: Lisa Bonet’ credit inserted just to keep us guessing—and because one of the producers let slip that Ms Bonet wouldn’t be in the finalé.
   But to have Sam Tyler—Spaceman—wake up in 2035 on a Mars mission, having lived in some virtual-reality world as part of the deep sleep needed for the long trip to the red planet, seemed a farce to me and a let-down. In fact, all I could do was laugh as the final few minutes unfolded. It was, let’s admit it, stupid.
   I imagine that if the series had gone on for another season and there were more “trip to Mars” clues, then it could have been more fulfilling. After 16 episodes, this wasn’t cool, and akin to Pam waking up in Dallas.

   It does explain why Gene Hunt is older and I kept calling him a father-figure, but for him to be ‘Major Tom’ Tyler was a surprise. Vic, it turns out, was the dark side of Sam.
   It’s still hard to process because most of those clues littered throughout the series meant very little—especially those that were quasi-religious.
   It seemed like it would explain more, with Sam arriving in Hyde—something a few of us speculated with the original series in 2007. It added to the mystery to learn that Sam was conceived there. Another good part was Rose Tyler (I still can’t get over this name) recognizing that ‘Det Skywalker’ is what she expected her son to grow up to be like. But so what? It all gets undone in the final scene.
   Highlight of the episode was Sam visiting an elderly Annie in 2010, a scene that some of us expected to see in the original as we speculated what had happened to the original Sam Tyler. That would have been brilliant as an outcome had Sam woken up in 2009. We also saw Sam and Annie finally kiss—a scene many of us waited for. But it’s all for nought: Sam doesn’t find 1973 more fulfilling and he and Annie wake up as colleagues on the mission, she having had no experience of falling in love with him.
   You get the feeling that it was a case of “all that work for nothing” and now that Col Annie Norris (‘I just pretend it’s far, far into the future, and they work for me’), Major Tom, Sam, Chris and Ray have got there, thanks to Frank Morgan at Mission Control and Windy the computer, the question remains: so what?
   The only consolation is the white shoe of Philip Glenister—well, Harvey Keitel, but in tribute to the original Gene Genie—reaching the red planet.

Zap2It has a good interview with two of the producers of US Life on Mars, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, on the finalé on Wednesday night there.
   At least the show has been given a proper sending off from ABC there.
   The story is rather brief so I won’t excerpt much. But it does make me wonder how they will tie in all the episodes this week, as there are some wildly varying possibilities of why American Sam is in 1973. From the story:

“It wasn’t terrifically complicated[,]” to have the season finale also be the series ender, Rosenberg said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We always knew what the season finale would be, and we always knew what the series finale would be. We just didn't expect to get to the series finale this quickly.”

   Since the beginning the producers have said Jason O’Mara’s Sam Tyler will not be in a coma, so that rules out the original reason.
   I still think Sam is in a USSR ESP experiment, but who knows?

Last week’s penultimate US Life on Mars offered some surprises—such as the Aries name re-appearing at a toy factory which sold the Rovers that Sam found in an earlier episode. Special Agent Frank Morgan was far more sinister than the original British DCI of the same name, and might have been a red herring thrown in by the American writers to put those of us who watched the originals off! (Bravo!) And one scene was directly from the first episode of the original Life on Mars: Sam standing on top of the roof looking at jumping off as a means of returning to 2008–9 and Annie stopping him.
   One scene was eerily reminiscent of the original’s final, too. There, Sam put his hand on Annie’s heart again, sensing it beating. Here, Annie put Sam’s hand there, to prove she was real.
   I have not seen the Spanish version but to my knowledge, the rooftop scene has now been filmed three times: once in the original, once in the unaired pilot and now once in the US remake. It was interesting the US writers put it in the 16th episode and I believe it is significant that they did.
   It could also explain why the last act of the first US aired episode omitted this scene. We shall see this week as the American remake of Life on Mars concludes and we find out why Sam Tyler is in 1973.

Variety has some additional info on the US Life on Mars finalé.
   For a start, the writers were planning a big revelation anyway, and only the second half needed a rewrite to reveal more of why Sam Tyler is in 1973.
   Variety reiterates that it won’t be the same as the original Sam Tyler’s reason.
   Secondly, both Michael Imperioli and Jonathan Murphy—American Ray and Chris—will be present, despite being gunned down in last week’s episode.

If the ABC press release preview of next week’s US Life on Mars is any indication, Dets Ray Carling and Chris Skelton are dead. Or somehow each survived four rounds at point blank range. But here’s a great little clue for those of us who saw the original British series: ‘Peter Gerety as Agent Frank Morgan’.
   It’s one of the many Wizard of Oz references in Life on Mars, and the Americans seem to be heading in the same direction. But we know the finalé will be completely different since the British one didn’t have Ray and Chris killed off with three episodes to go.
   If it’s agent Frank Morgan, not DCI, then he isn’t Internal Affairs—the equivalent bureau the Americans probably had to the British one—but possibly a Fed. But it doesn’t explain the Aries Project or the nanobots that the American adaptors have created in the course of the remake.
   His age is right if his character is like the original’s Frank Morgan, but I will feel a bit let down if Agent Frank Morgan is Sam’s doctor in 2009 as well. I will be watching for the clues next week.

I didn’t see that one coming. And there are major spoilers in this blog post, more than usual. Try not to even scroll down if you don’t want to know because the caption in the photo below will give a lot away.
   Last night’s US Life on Mars was a huge departure from the original. This is the third-to-last American episode, so the makers might well be trying to tie up loose ends. Or, we might begin to see if there is a way Sam Tyler can change the past—in that Journeyman sort of a way.
   Scriptwriters for the 15th episode were Sonny Postiglione and Tracy McMillan; McMillan, of course, had scripted a few of the more imaginative episodes this season as well as one of the Journeymans.
   Before we get to the surprises, it was a neat in-joke to have Sam go undercover as an Irishman from Dublin which, of course, is where actor Jason O’Mara hails from. There was a comment about how authentic his Irish accent sounded. Though for a second I thought there was another Doppelgänger as with last week’s remake.
   New Jersey-born actor Peter Greene always plays a good villain, and this episode was no exception. (Folks might remember him from The Mask.)
   The first big departure was answering a question I had of the original: why did Sam Tyler so fear confronting his younger self? Here, he explains that he fears turning himself into someone darker. But, as the episode closed, Sam does indeed speak with his younger self in 1973 and there is an understanding that he has not affected himself negatively.
   The second huge departure happens in the final scene. Greene’s character, Jimmy McManus, shoots Ray and Chris, each with four rounds. It’s going to be remarkably hard for the two of them to survive this, unless the final two episodes get very supernatural or cosmic. And if they don’t, I guess there’ll be no American Ashes to Ashes.

   As to the crime of the week, it wasn’t particularly strong—but they weren’t that clever in the original series sometimes, either. The joy, for me, was always trying to find out why Sam was in 1973 and the character development that went with that. This was present here, and it is a shame there will only be 17 US Life on Mars episodes just as the show hits its stride.
   I can’t see it going beyond 24 comfortably, admittedly, but 17 do seem a tad too few.
   Without Ray and Chris, will there be more Gene Hunt next week? And as the original series’ final two were quite impressive, will the Americans be able to match the quality?

Citing a lack of resonance with the audience, ABC has announced the American version of Life on Mars will finish after this season.
   I learned this when I got back from a full-on day out of the office, in an email sent from Tanya on our team.
   It should mean the run will be longer than the UK’s, and fans (and I count myself as one—I like both UK and US versions) won’t have to wait long to find out what happened to US Sam Tyler.
   I still think he’s part of an ESP experiment for the Soviet Union, inadvertently trying to discover who or what God is.

The latest US Life on Mars was another adapted UK story, as I had expected from last week’s promo, but the plot was changed hugely. It shows that the American writers are getting into the swing of things, and it was an enjoyable 40 minutes.
   The reduction of 19 minutes from the original means many elements were omitted, but I think I am biased when I say I enjoyed this story more than last week’s, which was a fully original American-penned script.
   For UK fans, it was a remake of the first episode of the second series written by Matthew Graham, which guest-starred Marc Warren as Tony Crane, Yasmin Bannerman as Eve, and Kevin McNally (sometimes credited as Kevin R. McNally) as Det Supt Harry Woolf. Chris Bowers, less well known in the US context than Warren, played Crane, New York-based actress Kerry Bishé took the Eve role (consequently, being played by a Caucasian, the references to the mixed relationship were omitted), while Harry Woolf was, surprisingly, played by former US senator Fred Thompson (usually credited as Fred Dalton Thompson).
   I wonder if the Senator knows of the fate of the original Harry Woolf. Let’s say it doesn’t quite follow the DA Arthur Branch path.
   You may or may not agree with Thompson’s politics, but I always thought he was a fine actor.
   The dialogue was similar to the original’s (I can still hear Warren say, ‘Your DI Tyler thinks he’s from the future’), especially the scene after Crane is arrested, though there was less interplay between Sam and Gene. And that’s where this remake of the ninth episode falls over: a lot of time is given to the Sam–Ray conflict and to Annie investigating on Sam’s behalf when a restraining order is issued against him. The original was superior on most counts.
   In 2007, Graham played on the contrast between the two men’s policing methods, but only after the first series set it up so well. Stateside, the Sam–Gene relationship is markedly different, and Sam spends as much time at odds with Ray Carling than he does with his superior. (In fact, for inexplicable reasons, Michael Imperioli—US Ray—gives a VO as the episode starts.) This may be to do with Harvey Keitel’s age and the father-figure approach has been creeping in gradually over the course of the US remake.
   One nice touch was Keitel reading a newspaper clipping with the headline ‘Rogue lieutenant’, which surely was a tribute to his 1992 film, Bad Lieutenant.
   It was still a very good episode (and could only be less well considered when compared with the original), and probably because I was spending it watching for the differences, I didn’t mind that there was no advance of the Aries Project storyline established a few weeks back.
   The original episode’s first minute and a half, as British viewers saw it, is below.

And the second series’ trailer, in which one can hear Warren’s line: