John and I watched the sublime Life on Mars with John Simm and Philip Glenister on BBC America. We loved every trippy, twisty, hilarious, edgy minute of it.
So, of course, us Yanks had to copy it. Badly. It’s a shame, because it has Jason O’Mara in the Simm role, and he was fantastic in The Closer . But the writing is clunky, Harvey Keitel seems to be phoning in the Glenister part on a sketchy transatlantic connection, and the visuals are so frighteningly similar to the original (down to the costumes and some of the actors) that aside from the accents, it’s hard to know why they even bothered re-making it, aside from US networks’ obvious penchant for ripping off good ideas from the UK.
I’m so sorry, England.
I wondered about that. I got to watching it last night and the only way I could deal with it is if this is what his mind is making up while he’s in a coma. I didn’t have dreams in my coma, as far as I know.
The police are more informal and brutal than they were in the 70s, there were real policewomen, even big cities didn’t have that many hippies, and NYC apartments of that size had their own bathrooms. He does say he was four in 1973 so his brain could just be extrapolating on what he’s heard about the time period.