Is there life on Mars?
Aug. 29th, 2007 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLast night ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and I watched the very last episode of Life on Mars. I was so pleased that it was being repeated, and that I would have the chance to enjoy something that people were enthusing about. And I enjoyed the first couple of episodes very much: they were sharply scripted, witty, intriguing entertainment. But by the time the BBC upped the dosage from one to two installments a week, although durham_rambler stuck with it, I discovered I didn't care enough to give it that much of my time. I saw one or two more episodes, when I was in the mood, didn't feel I was having any trouble following the story, and came back on board for the dénouement.
It is, after all, just a good old-fashioned cop show, with a twist; the twist being that a cop show set in the 1970s is critiqued from the point of view of modern policing, by the introduction of Sam Tyler. (This also adds a little spice to the inevitable silent bond between the two lead characters; but the sheer slashiness of the proceedings is not the line I want to pursue here). I had gathered the impression, from what I read about the show, that there is some mystery about Sam's presence in 1973, and the new-readers-start-here monologue with which each show starts: "Am I mad? Am I in a coma? Or am I in the past?" pays lip-service to this interpretation. But each episode makes it quite clear what the answer is - "You're in a coma." - as voices from the outside world come through to tell of Sam's medical mishaps and devoted mother. It's Iain Banks' The Bridge meets The Sweeney (or The Professionals - what do I know?).
If the whole story is going on in Sam's mind while he's in a coma, there are only two ways it can end. Oh, it can be spun out indefinitely, but if it is to end, then either he recovers or he doesn't. Which of these is the happy ending? Surely, for Sam to recover and get home: and that is what happens, except that suddenly, when he gets there, it isn't home any more, and he has to find his way back to the world inside his head, to the undemanding Annie and the Wrong but Wromantic Gene Hunt, in the Manchester where the only black face belongs the the philosophical bartender with his simple but profound philosophy, and where it's OK to beat up suspects and witnesses (well, not OK exactly, because we know we shouldn't, let's say "naughty but nice").
I have two problems with this (and they probably are my problems, and I am going more deeply into an amiable piece of entertainment than it will bear). The first is that the conclusion opts for the unreal over the real, and invites us to see this as a good thing; it's the problem I have with Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, which I loved right up to the resolution, and she at least doesn't present it as a happy ending.
The second is that throughout the series I accepted as a fiction the extraordinary detail with which Sam's unconscious recreates a period he cannot possibly remember: that's the framework of the fiction, accept it, enjoy the story. I even found myself defending the 1970s: surely the police weren't that bad all the time (sometimes they were worse, of course, but that's another story), Sam's flat seems grottier than it needs to be - and so on, because that's the way the story is presented, things are better now and Sam wants to get back to now. But if actually he doesn't, if he returns to a life of committee meetings on which he can't focus, if his mind really has been gathering up and recreating all this detail, does that mean that secretly he yearns for the days when policing was done Gene Hunt's way? Which is not a reading I'm very happy about.
And now it's time for Heroes.
durham_rambler and I watched the very last episode of Life on Mars. I was so pleased that it was being repeated, and that I would have the chance to enjoy something that people were enthusing about. And I enjoyed the first couple of episodes very much: they were sharply scripted, witty, intriguing entertainment. But by the time the BBC upped the dosage from one to two installments a week, although durham_rambler stuck with it, I discovered I didn't care enough to give it that much of my time. I saw one or two more episodes, when I was in the mood, didn't feel I was having any trouble following the story, and came back on board for the dénouement.It is, after all, just a good old-fashioned cop show, with a twist; the twist being that a cop show set in the 1970s is critiqued from the point of view of modern policing, by the introduction of Sam Tyler. (This also adds a little spice to the inevitable silent bond between the two lead characters; but the sheer slashiness of the proceedings is not the line I want to pursue here). I had gathered the impression, from what I read about the show, that there is some mystery about Sam's presence in 1973, and the new-readers-start-here monologue with which each show starts: "Am I mad? Am I in a coma? Or am I in the past?" pays lip-service to this interpretation. But each episode makes it quite clear what the answer is - "You're in a coma." - as voices from the outside world come through to tell of Sam's medical mishaps and devoted mother. It's Iain Banks' The Bridge meets The Sweeney (or The Professionals - what do I know?).
If the whole story is going on in Sam's mind while he's in a coma, there are only two ways it can end. Oh, it can be spun out indefinitely, but if it is to end, then either he recovers or he doesn't. Which of these is the happy ending? Surely, for Sam to recover and get home: and that is what happens, except that suddenly, when he gets there, it isn't home any more, and he has to find his way back to the world inside his head, to the undemanding Annie and the Wrong but Wromantic Gene Hunt, in the Manchester where the only black face belongs the the philosophical bartender with his simple but profound philosophy, and where it's OK to beat up suspects and witnesses (well, not OK exactly, because we know we shouldn't, let's say "naughty but nice").
I have two problems with this (and they probably are my problems, and I am going more deeply into an amiable piece of entertainment than it will bear). The first is that the conclusion opts for the unreal over the real, and invites us to see this as a good thing; it's the problem I have with Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, which I loved right up to the resolution, and she at least doesn't present it as a happy ending.
The second is that throughout the series I accepted as a fiction the extraordinary detail with which Sam's unconscious recreates a period he cannot possibly remember: that's the framework of the fiction, accept it, enjoy the story. I even found myself defending the 1970s: surely the police weren't that bad all the time (sometimes they were worse, of course, but that's another story), Sam's flat seems grottier than it needs to be - and so on, because that's the way the story is presented, things are better now and Sam wants to get back to now. But if actually he doesn't, if he returns to a life of committee meetings on which he can't focus, if his mind really has been gathering up and recreating all this detail, does that mean that secretly he yearns for the days when policing was done Gene Hunt's way? Which is not a reading I'm very happy about.
And now it's time for Heroes.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 06:21 am (UTC)(I always mutter at this point that the one-off BBC2 play The Black and Blue Lamp was much better, though its critique was of how the police are shown on the media, and that was the reverse of Life on Mars in that the past police Dixon of Dock Green were totally clean and good, and the modern TV series in which they ended up, The Filth were totally corrupt.)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 08:07 am (UTC)The Black and Blue Lamp is new to me - sounds interesting.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 09:49 am (UTC)I think we videoed it....
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 09:02 am (UTC)But then. Maybe it isn't supposed to be a happy ending? I mean, he died .
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 03:46 pm (UTC)Unless the bit where the sinister little girl from the test card switches off is not just the end for us, the viewers, but for Sam too? (Maybe that works: it isn't actually a happy ending, you just don't have to know that if you don't want to.)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 04:15 pm (UTC)