71 posts tagged “sam tyler”

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:

I finally saw the first La chica de ayer (Spanish Life on Mars) after Antena 3 put the whole episode online. It plays out more closely to the UK original than the US remakes, with most of the scenes intact, albeit with some name changes (e.g. Maya is now Sonia; and the others, such as Quin Gallardo, the Spanish Gene Hunt, I have noted on this blog before). However, there are additional scenes and from what I can sense, the pilot is a bit longer than both the original and US remakes, at around 65 minutes excluding commercials.

   Our protagonist, Samuel Santos, has encounters with Sonia’s mother—remember that this remake is set in 1977, not 1973—and young Sonia herself in the pilot. He also confronts the murder suspect in his jail cell, in a scene which results in the suspect’s death after he takes Cristóbal hostage. (While Quin does not hit Samuel in their first scene, he does so here.) Additionally, Samuel goes back to where he first awoke in 1977—near a tunnel—and sees a light at the end of it. Running toward it (with an instrumental of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as he does so—the song works just as well here as David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’), he thinks it’s the way back to 2009, only to discover it’s a couple having a snog in a car with its lights on. He sees a poster which features a man jumping off a building, and decides it’s a clue to help him wake up back in 2009. In the end, of course, Ana comes to the top of the building to convince Sam to stay (a scene which is in the original UK version and the Kelley pilot, but is saved till episode 16 of the aired American remake).
   This final act is a bit more drawn out, but the acting is very good and transcends—only just—the cheaper sets used in the Spanish remake. One area where La chica de ayer lags behind both the UK and US versions is the score, which sounds overly melodramatic.
   The show works well set in Madrid and the high-rises and motorways chosen in the 2009 parts contrast the 1977 setting far better than the equivalent scene in the original and US remakes. There’s also more of the Samuel–Ana relationship at the expense of the Samuel–Quin one, and there’s no sign of Ana’s boyfriend, current or former, here.
   My Spanish comprehension is terrible at best even though I can read the language a little, so please bear this in mind in my judgement of the acting. The show has done well in the eyes of the Spanish critics and from what I can see, it has been faithful to the source and has set things up very well.

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.

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?

There are heaps more at the official Antena 3 site, but here is a less butchered clip of Inspector Jefe Samuel Santos Gallego getting hit by a car and waking up in 1977, meeting fellow cops Cristobál and Raymundo at the station, as well as his boss, Inspector Jefe Joaquín ‘Quin’ Gallardo, in the new drama La chica de ayer. The show, a remake of the BBC’s Life on Mars, begins Monday in Spain.
   Fans of both the original and the US remake will recognize the similarities, though Quin doesn’t punch Sam. Sam still asks for his mobile in 1977, as a cop points to his Seat 131 car, saying that that is mobile.

A 15-second TVC has now appeared for the Spanish series La chica de ayer (Spanish Life on Mars) on YouTube:

   Maybe US fans who lament the cancellation of their remake could get their fix via the Spanish one? After all, I have been getting my Life on Mars–Ashes to Ashes fix by watching the American version.
   Also online, though it surfaced in the middle of February, is another publicity shot from La chica de ayer, with star Ernesto Alterio and Manuela Velasco, who plays Ana.    La chica de ayer premières on Spain’s Antena 3 on March 9.