It's the Freakiest Show

Back in the early 70s, I'd sometimes sit in my parents' room and watch The Avengers on their old black and white TV. It was cheeky fantasy really, a strange alternative world of crime-fighting keyed by the visual cues of a bowler hat, an umbrella, small guns, and Dianna Rigg's tight leather pants. I'm not sure if the show actually ran in color on Channel 9, but I watched in shades of gray and all the world of that Great Britain seemed to live in those hues. The 60s had already swung by the time the series ran in America, and it seemed like a relic - a fun relic, to be sure, but ancient.

I was thinking about The Avengers when I tuned into the new BBC drama Life on Mars, whose premise is a lawman's strange return to the world of 1973 in grimy Manchester, whose monochrome backdrop is tinted a stready flavor of grimy red brick. From the whirlwind opening, when a chance traffic accident sends Deputy Inspector Sam Tyler into a netherworld - he "lives" as a police officer in 1973 but is occasionally drawn to his hospital room in 2005. I could go on about the premise, but I won't; it's complex and in some ways, the facts don't matter.

What matters are the superb performances, the groovy soundtrack, the wardrobe brillance (all cheap leather, chains, and wide polyester collars), the sets thick with cigarette smoke, and the wonderful enveloping sentimentalism for the 70s. The moral center is provided by DI Tyler's nemesis, an old-fashioned bruised-knuckle copper as played by Philip Glenister, whose rutted face is like a crinkled motorway roadmap. His corruption and real-world venality root the weekly episodes in the kind of fertile acting loam that produced Ian McShane's brilliant Al Swearengen.

The men smoke, booze, beat up suspects as they please, and grab ass; the women don't seem to mind. Oh, the nostalgia - keyed by the soundtrack, which opens with Bowie title track and has included (thus far) pitch-perfect choices like Live and Let Die, Jean Genie, and Lou Reed's I'm So Free. I'm totally hooked. Or as Bowie said:

Take a look at the lawman
Beating up
the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever
know
He's in the best selling show.
Is there life
on Mars?

Comments

[Lee Brimmicombe-Wood]

Life on Mars is a homage to the classic '70s British cop show The Sweeney. The Sweeney was a groundbreaking show in the UK, partly because it was the first to ape US shows with its car chases and casual two-fisted violence, but also because it created the ambiguous milieu you see in Life on Mars where the line between coppers and villains is the thickness of a cigarette paper. It also has some top performances in it, notably from John Thaw as the weary thief-taker Jack Regan.

The Sweeney still stands up as a great show, thirty years on. If you have a multi-region DVD player and can be bothered to purchase editions of the show from amazon.co.uk, you are in for a treat.

[Lee Brimmicombe-Wood]

I wan't fulsome enough above. I should have said: "The Sweeney still stands up as a great show, thirty years on." Then I should have added: "it is amongst the very best British television has to offer."

[Susan Herr]

OMG. On of the defining moments of my life came one Monday night when my dad announced he was taking the family for milkshakes at the same time The Avengers came on. Don't remember what I chose but 40 years later, the gravity of the choice is still with me.

[Rob Anderson]

Mmmmmm...Emma Peel. I was an early adolescent when that show was broadcast on local TV stations as afternoon filler. As you can imagine I was very much aware of Ms. Peel's....assets.

Sorry.

[riffle]

Even if just for the pure novelty of the premise, LoM is well worth watching. However, I agree with you: "What matters are the superb performances, the groovy soundtrack, the wardrobe brillance (all cheap leather, chains, and wide polyester collars), the sets thick with cigarette smoke, and the wonderful enveloping sentimentalism for the 70s."

Those things and the interplay among a few of the characters really make the show a pleasure to watch.

I have to admit, committed anglophile that I am, I actually look forward to an American version of this show for a few reasons:

1) Given a decent writin supervisor (I'm not sure David Kelly is the one to do it), the series could be through-composed more seamlessly. The various themes and levels (70's cop shows rock!; is this really time travel?; is he meant to get back?; how does the past intrude into the present and vice versa?) often seem clumsly grafted together.
2) No offense to the Brits, but most of their cop shows seem a bit rinky-dink. The don't have the menace, malevalence and stankiness of US cop shows. The stakes seem lower.
3) The resolution didn't gel for me: I needed it to make me believe in the premise retrospectively. I think if they'd have had another pass at the script for the last several episodes, the whole season would have come together more.

Stil, it's the best UK cop show I've seen (not having seen the Sweeney). And it is a genuinely creative television show with several large things to recommend it overall, and many smaller things to recommend each episode.

Here's to series 2 -- and/or to a US version (which, admittedly, is likely to be screwed up and therefore fall far below the original).

[Lee Brimmicombe-Wood]

The British have always looked enviously at American cop shows. Fortunately, when we do it well (which is not all that often) they are not pale imitations but have a quality all their own.

I highly recommend shows like Tony Garnett's 'The Cops' (which I think was shown in the US as 'Stanton Blues') and the Internal Affairs drama 'Between the Lines'.

[Sean]

Just descovered 'Life on Mars'. Watched my first episode all the way through last night. Very entertaining. Apparently, if you have BBC America on demand, youcan not only watch the whole episode, but it includes a few bonus scenes as well.

[Wax Banks]

Am I the only one reminded of Cracker when I watch this show? That was a superb show, and if Mars's lead is no Robbie Coltrane, the show's writers have taken a similarly begrudging approach to our sympathy for him, and invested him with a very human spark.

[howard]

Lee, as someone whose family lived in London in the early-mid '70s, i too admire the few episodes of the Sweeney that i saw, but wasn't the Sweeney itself built on the work of Softly, Softly and Z Cars, which i recall as far grittier and more realistic than any american policiers of the day....

[Lee Brimmicombe-Wood]

Howard, Z Cars and Softly Softly were certainly more realistic than their cozy precursors like Dixon of Dock Green. But they were from the school of British 'kitchen sink drama', of low key realism. You wouldn't see a car chase, a fistfight or outright cynicism in one of these shows. Indeed, their portrayal of the police (and authority in general) was respectful if not downright glowing.

By comparison The Sweeney broke with convention and aimed for something more American in tone, complete with chases and fights. It also gave the British a cynical view of the police for the first time and it had a downbeat, almost underworld glamour about it. Regan and Carter hated their bosses and were not averse to beating confessions out of people and obtaining evidence by underhand means. They were in some ways closer to the criminals than the public they were protecting.

The Sweeney was significant in another way. Both the real Flying Squad and the gangs they were fighting loved the show. It flattered cops and crims alike. There is much anecdotal evidence that the real police and criminals began to live out their TV roles. Certainly the police drinking culture, the casual sexism and habits of non-procedural evidence gathering is said to have flourished in this era, though how much of that was a direct result of the show is not known.