LIFE ON MARS
(Image taken from BBC)
The year is 2006. Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler runs a Manchester CID station. When his colleague(and girlfriend) Maya gets herself kidnapped, Sam goes into a depression...and gets himself run over on the outskirts of town.
He comes round in an urban wasteland, where a uniformed policeman IDs him as a DI(Detective Inspector) just transferred in from the suburb of Hyde. Confused, Sam makes his way to his office, passing old fashioned cars and finding himself wearing a leather jacket instead of his suit. In what should be his familiar office are unfamiliar people who use up a ton of paper and who think 'PC terminal' is a police constable. He then finds himself grabbed by DCI Gene Hunt, who runs this office. The year is 1973.
Put me in 1973 and I'd have a nightmare operating without modern technology. For the by-the-2006-book Sam Tyler, his biggest headache is the lack of modern policing methods. Limited accsess to forensics results in coppers operating on bare instincts, in complete contrast to Sam's intellectual approach. His 21st century methods have had some succsess but not only is 1973 unfamiliar territory for him(he was only 4 years old in that year) but he spent the first season unsure over how much of his experiences were real, as he kept hearing voices, seemingly from family and a 2006 medical team, suggesting that he was in fact in a coma.
Sam's biggest headache is Gene Hunt, the man he now has to call 'guv'. Gene is of the National Service generation and doesn't particularly care how he puts the dodgy geezers of Manchester away as long as they're behind bars before dinner. Corruptable, stubborn and more than happy to use violence to get his way, Gene only reluctantly takes Sam's ideas on board but is willing to admit that they have their uses. A Western fan, Gene sees himself as 'The Good the Bad and the Ugly'.
WDC Annie Cartwright is in theory Sam's biggest ally in the 70s CID. A smart woman who studied psychology, she's the only person who Sam's felt willing to confess his uncertainties about his situation to. Though Annie's sympathetic to the new guy, she's reluctant to believe his stories about being from the future or in a coma but is still willing to help Sam through whatever his problems are.
The CID team is completed by two contrasting characters. Ray Carling is the loosest, roughest one of the bunch. He's kept around due to his record for putting people away and was in line for a promotion to DI before Sam's arrival but his practically nonexistant morals have led to him getting demoted from Detective Sergeant(DS) to Detective Constable(DC) after an attempt to make a drug dealing suspect talk led to the innocent man getting killed(though he has since been repromoted to DS).
Finally there's DC Chris Skelton, seemingly the team rookie. Nervy but eager, he's trying to use Sam as a role model and the man from the future is more than happy to teach him. Despite this, Chris's attitude to the new inspector is one of "I don't underestimate you boss, I just don't understand you".
Despite his increasing desperation to leave 1973, Gene still insists that Sam requested the 'transfer from Hyde'. Whatever Sam's feelings about his new world, it is clear that he has both relaxed more since arriving in the 70s and is enjoying to some extent being on Gene Hunt's team and having to deal with the 'guv' and his new colleagues. Will all the obvious roots out of the past having come up empty so far, the chances of him merely being in a coma are looking increasingly slim though. Sam is going to have to face the fact that "you're not going to wake up, because you're already awake".
According to the writers though, Sam never was awake in 1973. He came out of his coma in the middle of a train heist and came round to find his surgeon standing over him. However, he was never able to feel alive in 2006 either and instead made the 'definitive step' to jump off the roof of his office...and return to 1973 in time to save his teammates from gunmen! And that's where he'll stay, though there is still part of me that wants to believe that Gene and the crew are real in some way.
Either way, we'll get to catch up wit hGene, Ray and Chris at least as they go after the villains of London, 1981 in a spin off show called Ashes to Ashes.
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