BBC1's time-travel crime drama is so brilliant. But that's enough about Crime Traveller, what's Life On Mars like?
It's a surprisingly involving, well-written and directed piece of (whisper it) Science Fiction. It could so easily have been a horrifying amalgam of Good Night Sweetheart and That Seventies Show. It avoids that for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to;
1)Good writing. Tackling cultural differences between the time periods without erring on the side of either needlessly 'gritty' realism or campy 'remember Spangles' nostalgia was always going to be tricky, but so far they've managed it. At first I was afraid it would be putting big emphasis on how police officers are hamstrung by procedure now but were freer then ,but in fact the Seventies is coming off a lot worse in comparison, without being vilified. The third episode managed to combine CSI style procedural, tense gun-play, tape recorder comedy, and a commentary on the industrial decline of seventies Manchester.
2) Back To The Future references. Come on, when he's initially gone back, and he sees the billboard announcing the new bypass, all it needed was John Simms to be wearing an eighties inflatable style jacket.
3)Characters. John Simms' DCI is a likeable, passionate 21st Century man. Most cop shows have some kind of quirky maverick character, but Tyler's quirkiness comes from the fact that he's stranded in the past and thinks he's hallucinating, making the other characters seemingly view him as some kind of insane genius well-ahead of his time.
4) The Test Card Girl comes to him in his sleep and hassles him to compliment her clown. You have no idea how much I enjoyed typing that sentence.
