A good detective drama propounds you with an jolting twist in a story line with verve and gusto, making it an enjoyable and enlightening view. In this regard, Life on Mars is an ingeniously crafted TV drama, packed full of elliptically well-written scripts, impressively executed performance of a fine cast, and highly detailed periodical background setting that renders all the more convincing verisimilitude of each episode that resurrects the past in a mind blowing way.
The story evolves around the protagonist Sam (brilliantly played by John Simm), a clever, sharp-witted DCI with a heart who after a near-fatal car accident, finds himself awake in the year 1973, four years later he was born, as DI in the Manchester Police Department. The cause of the mysterious teleportation to the decade and the dilemma of Sam trapped in the past are the gist of this wonderfully thought-provoking drama which otherwise would be just another cop/crime drama with gratuitous hot car pursuits, bloodshed crime scenes, and mindless half-nude scenes. Sam constantly wants to return to what he believes to be the present or the reality, but the police department of the past needs his help. And that’s how the entire two seasons of the drama are unfolded.
Life on Mars is fun to watch with a delightful combination of 70s American cop drama appeal in appearance and scintillating synthesis of SCI-Fi and Psychological Suspense in content. It is a modern detective procedural worth the watching. You will have no guilty feeling of indulging in the entire two seasons at one setting on your Kindle Fire because it will both entertain your senses and spur your mind on to think about your own reality.
A Cat in the Mirror 