Has anyone else tried to watch this new American version of Life on Mars?
Here's its website, with a little video clip. I saw the original Life On Mars in its entirety (or so I assume anyway) on BBC America, and I absolutely loved it. The American version? I can't remotely say the same
.
Okay, first and foremost, Sam isn't Sam anymore! The original Sam Tyler was smart, witty, and preferred a pen over a sword. This new Sam Tyler... well, in the second episode, there's a scene where he contemplates shooting a child because he knows that the kid will grow up to be a murdering criminal. They completely changed Sam's personality dynamic, to a point where you just don't care about what he's going through anymore. The actor playing Sam would be fantastic in something else, but this show just isn't for him.
Every other character in the show is ruined as well. Remember how many times you laughed out loud at Phil Glenister's portrayal of Gene Hunt? All of his awesome one-liners and the slight hint of physical comedy? Well, Harvey Keitel (
Resevoir Dogs,
Mother Juggs & Speed), an actor whose excellent in movies, delivers the poorest performance in this remake, to me anyway. I had such great expectations for Keitel playing Hunt, but like Tyler, this character is an entirely new person. Annie was hacked to bits as well, and they removed the Sam/ Annie love dynamic! WTH!
Oh, and before I forget, does anyone remember Sam Tyler finding a bloody MARS ROVER during his Manchester adventures? Because this Sam Tyler does. Yeah. I'm not kidding. As anyone whose even remotely familiar with the show can tell you, the show gets its name from a David Bowie song called, you guessed it, "Life on Mars." And as anyone whose even remotely familiar with David Bowie can tell you, the song has absolutely nothing to do with space travel, alien worlds, or either of the Mars rovers... not
Spirit, and not
Opportunity. I have a really terrible feeling in my stomache that Sam Tyler in this new series isn't in a coma, but he's actually been abducted by Martians or something.
Seriously, American TV executives ruin EVERYTHING they touch. The most brilliant and original American TV show I've ever seen was a show called
John Doe, and they killed that after one season, regardless of a huge following and stellar ratings, because Fox needed, for reasons unbenownst to the world at large, to play another season of
Joe Millionaire, which tanked horrifically. It's no big surprise that 80% of modern American television is based on British shows, we all know that. But this new envisioning of Life on Mars is nothing short of a travesty, in my not-so-humble opinion. Has anyone else seen it? What do you think?
