5 posts tagged “20th century–fox”

US Life on Mars producers, take note, from a recent Family Guy where Stewie’s killing of Lois was a virtual reality simulation:

   Stewie: Oh, hello, Brian. Well, you recall my complaining about Lois and the fat man not taking me with them?
   Brian: Yeah …
   Stewie: Yes, well you said I don’t have it in me to kill Lois, so I was just running a simulation to find out exactly how killing her and taking over the world would play out for me.
   Brian: Yeah? How’d that go?
   Stewie: Not well, Brian, not well at all. I suppose I’m not ready to kill Lois or take over the world … yet.
   Brian: So what you’re saying is what you experienced in the simulation didn’t really happen or even matter?
   Stewie: Yes, that’s correct.
   Brian: So it was sort of, like, just a dream.
   Stewie: No, it was a simulation.
   Brian: Yes, but theoretically, if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish only to find out that none of it really happened, I mean, you don’t think that would be just like a giant middle finger to them?
   Stewie: Well, hopefully, they would have enjoyed the ride.
   Brian: I don’t know, man. I think you’d piss a lot of people off that way.

   Kind of says it all about last night’s US Life on Mars finalé. Maybe I could call it a cop-out and say the pun was intended? It’d be one consolation for me, making bad puns.
   And now the Spaniards know how not to end their remake.

Great US Life on Mars: a remake of the eighth UK episode, so the basic storyline was the same—and because of the shorter running time, some bits were missed, and there was less depth to the Sam–Annie relationship caused in part by the still inexplicable introduction of Lee Tergesen’s character, Lee Crocker, into the US show. Gene played a bit part here, but he did in the original version of this episode as well.
   Vic Tyler (Dean Winters), is crueller in his American incarnation, and it’s interesting to note that Ruth Tyler (Jennifer Ferrin) is called Rose Tyler here—something I missed a few weeks ago. (For Life on Mars trivia buffs, Sam Tyler’s surname came about when the daughter of one of the writers suggested it, after watching Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler character in Doctor Who. It’s very interesting that the American writers chose Rose as Sam’s mother’s name.) And because of the shorter running time, there was one disappointment: both Sam and Annie had to verbalize things that we had to figure out for ourselves in the original (e.g. Sam realizing he had blocked the memory of Annie’s death at the hands of Vic). We also missed the part where Sam told Ruth, in the original, what to tell young Sam about his father.
   But what a cliffhanger! It reminds me of the call Sam received at the end of episode nine in the UK (second series, episode one) from Hyde 2612 and he seems genuinely fearful of the rings from the black rotary-dial phone. This time, Sam gets clues from the printing and form codes at the NYPD to take him to an address, 35 Stewart Drive. There, the phone rings as soon as Sam enters the house. And the call is of an electronically muffled voice, one that can hear Sam.
   Before you think that this is a straight adaptation of the British series and it’s DCI Frank Morgan calling, the call’s contents are chilling. The lights are flickering in the room as in Jekyll, and the script goes something like this:

Caller: Hello, Sam.
Sam: You can hear me.
Caller: Of course I can hear you. You’re doing a good job, Sam. I need you to do something for me.
Sam: Who is this?
Caller: I need you to go to the basement.
Sam: Why?
Caller: The basement, Sam. Across the room, behind you. I need you to go down to the basement, Sam.

And the credits begin.
   So: is this the American equivalent of Alex Drake’s Pierrot clown or the Test Card Girl? Because it doesn’t appear to be the American Frank Morgan calling. The preview suggests there is a nutter decapitating police officers, and the call could be from the killer. No Gene, Sam, Ray and Chris getting into the Cortina and saying, ‘Pub.’ ’Pub.’ ’Pub.’ … ‘Pub.’ Not a happy, upbeat ending—but it wouldn’t have worked here anyway.
   It appears this is where the Americans will break for now. The series stops here and does not return until January 28, 2009, after Lost, on ABC. It is a logical place to conclude things—this story was the season finalé in Britain—but by that week I imagine we will all be waiting for the next series of Ashes to Ashes more.
   Here is the January 28 preview and I don’t think there is a British equivalent this time. This, as far as I can tell, is where the two shows really begin to part company. And the Americans seem to be taking a darker route, which is what has also been promised for Ashes to Ashes in 2009.

Before I blog about Ashes to Ashes, a link to a Podcast featuring an interview with Kevin Falls, creator and executive producer of Journeyman, the NBC series that the network under-promoted in 2007. He’s still under contract with the network, so he has to moderate his words, but he is very grateful to fans for supporting his series.
   The interview is about half-way through the Podcast, so zoom ahead if you are not interested in other sci-fi stuff.

http://www.sliceofscifi.com/podpress_trac/web/7562/0/Slice_145_012608.mp3

If you do a Google Blog Search, the entries for Journeyman seem to be on the up, with people discovering the show this week. I am not sure why it has taken this long to catch on Stateside, but I hope this late interest will have people tuning in or writing to NBC when they realize it’s for the chop.
   Outside the US, Journeyman is on Channel Ten in Australia and Sky One in the UK, so I expect more chatter about the show globally soon. Maybe NBC (or 20th Century–Fox) will realize it has an international hit on its hands and extra episodes will be worth its while.

Vegas’s opening sequence may have been lengthy by modern standards, but how about one around the same length but for a half-hour timeslot show? The Bob Newhart Show was another classic, and I was always impressed that a guy called Lorenzo Music came up with the theme …er … music. Say, wasn’t he the voice of Garfield?
   It showed that Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM (Mary Tyler Moore?) Productions didn’t only make a sitcom with Mary Tyler Moore. (Any sentences with more mentions of Ms Moore and annoying alliteration?) Again, note the music—I am unsure which shows these days have a memorable theme. You can’t hum The Theme from Lost (heck, is there one?) but you can hum this one, so much so that a few bars of it were even used on the final episode of the later Newhart show.

   From my point of view, the modernist graphics (Bob walking in the rectangles going across the screen), 1970s architecture and the use of a heavy, seriffed typeface (Cooper Black) are interesting, and show a simplicity that still, in my mind, works more clearly than the swish, three-dimensional, effects-laden styles of the early 21st century.