Life On Mars

[Capn Flukie]

UK Gene Hunt is a god among men.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ So is US Gene. I mean, come on...how can a character played by Harvey Keitel NOT be cool?

 

[Australis]

UK Gene Hunt is a god among men.

^ That, I have absolutely no argument with. His first appearance in A2A is beyond classic.

 

[Canadave]

^ So is US Gene. I mean, come on...how can a character played by Harvey Keitel NOT be cool?

He's okay. But Keitel didn't bring anywhere near as much to the role as Glennister did. He defined Gene Hunt, while Harvey Keitel just seemed to be playing a subdued version of one of his standard tough guy roles.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I still liked Harv in the role though.

 

[Dac]

I really adore Life on Mars but I'm fairly mixed on what they did to the mythology in Ashes. I felt like the premise became very shaky by the third season and, in a way, they ruined the ending of the original series.

At the end of the original series the guy got the girl, got his mates and they all drove off into the sunset. There wasn't any explanation of who or what they were. I actually think Ashes went on a season too long, plotwise, but we were net winners because we got another season of Gene being Gene. An added bonus was that Bollyknickers definitely grew into the role as time went by.

Spoiler: Spoilers galore

Honestly, it's been years, so I could be misremembering things, but the original ending to LoM made it seem that Sam had a choice as to whether he wanted to be in the dreary real world or in his alternate reality/dream state.

For Alex, it seemed like she had no choice in the matter whatsoever. Gene was meant always meant to guide dead cops to cop heaven, so if you saw him, you were guaranteed to be dead.

As I suggested at the time, I also think the more interesting ending would be for the character to choose life - precisely because she is a mother and doesn't find 200X a dreary, lifeless, joyless reality like Sam did.

And yeah, I'm not sure we got anything out of the fact that all the cops in this world are dead cops who have yet to resolve their traumas. Certainly it didn't feel like what they had in mind when Life on Mars first started.

But, maybe it's just easier to treat the two shows as completely separate entities and leave it at that.

Err, lots of spoilers here I guess...

Spoiler: LoM/A2A spoilers

The thing with that is though, Sam was supposed to die, it was that Doctor who in the dream world was the new chief inspector who drew him away from Gene Hunt that allowed him to wake up in the first place. If he had gone back to help Gene he would have stayed in the coma but because he didn't he woke up.

Alex never had that chance, she was shot in the head and the only thing keeping her alive was life support until she eventually died. Although the end of A2A was nice and all with Nelson, I really wish it was Sam who came out and greeted her, because it was Sam who told her about Gene in the first place.

 

[marillion]

Funny.. I was worried I'd be bumping a long dead thread... I watched the US version via Netflix yesterday and have to say I wished I'd stayed with it during its initial run.. some really great episodes mixed in with a few clunkers.. I'm glad the show got an ending, rushed as it may have been.. And it wasn't a bad ending either..

I just wish A2A was available for instant view.. I missed pretty much all of Series 2 and I don't think Series 3 was on BBC America, was it?

 

[Kirkman1987]

^

Yeah, it never aired here. For some reason we don't have a dvd release of any of A2A either. I made my own, but would really like a more official version.