Life on Mars (2006) s02e08

The “Life on Mars” season finale begs think pieces about its failures. Not the direction; S.J. Clarkson does a great job. Not the acting; everyone’s good, though not really great because it’s such a bad story.

To wrap up the mystery of whether series lead John Simm is living in 1973 and experiencing hallucinations he’s a modern-day police officer in a coma imagining he’s in 1973, is in a coma and imagining 1973, or has somehow travelled back in time.

Now, the show doesn’t resolve the couple times Simm’s past actions have had present day repercussions and there’s never any serious suggested of time travel. So either it’s very likely to be the coma thing. And this episode, written by—oh, of course it is—Matthew Graham, is going to walk everyone through these possibilities like we’re watching the second or third episode of a miniseries. Meaning everything after the first episode of the first season… not important. There’s a reason there hasn’t been any character development over the second season; because there’s no season arc. It’s just been some soft two-parters—like this one, which has Ralph Brown return and tell Simm a whole bunch of hard truths about Philip Glenister and company—but they’ve been done-in-ones.

And now, the finale, which quickly drags Simm through a subplot about actually he’s had head trauma and is imagining all the future stuff (meaning the viewer’s existing in the imagined future too because we’ve got shared pop culture references, including a very bad Robocop one this episode, which should’ve been fine but Graham ruined it because of course he did). Now, there are all sorts of sight gags referring to previous episodes, which all imply some or most of the show has been entirely imaginary and a complete waste of time.

Then it turns out that entire subplot is a waste of time.

What’s so impressive about Clarkson’s direction is the way she doesn’t let the obvious narrative inertia of the script slow things down too much. Simm’s got what should be a really difficult part—especially when he keeps trying to pressure Liz White into sleeping with him—but ends up being fairly simple and digestible. Graham’s solution for the series’s puzzles and riddles is to do a couple obvious things, one of them a little more craven than the other, and wrap things up.

Only… it’s not like they’ve been wasting time about Simm investigating the reality of his reality the whole series. He’s only done it the first episode and this episode; everything else in between has been too slight. So there’s no rewatch quality to the episode itself. It’s just trying to justify itself.

It’s a disappointing finish, of course. Still a great cast, still a great production. Still funny. Graham doesn’t write the best jokes, but they get great deliveries.

But it’s just a bigger finale letdown than I remember.

Also.

Recasting Simm’s mom is a major failure.

Not even Clarkson can make that one work. Nor Simm for that matter. He’s got some highs and lows this episode; Graham’s script gives him so very little.

But, you know, it could’ve been worse. There are some really bad moves and some okay enough ones. There’s some nice character interplay, with everyone getting a second off of sorts.

They really just needed a good show bible; they needed some character development; they needed Joanne Froggatt. But even without, “Life on Mars” is a good show, one with a mildly annoying finish to a middling second season. Great performances. Great production values.

Anyway. It’s not good but it’s a very terse fine. Clarkson does a great job. The actors do what they can with what they’ve got.

And you’re not left wanting any more “Life on Mars,” which seems to have been the goal of the second season.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e07

S.J. Clarkson directs this episode so it always looks good and moves well. The script’s from first “Mars”-timer Mark Greig, who turns in a fairly decent “is the guv a killer” episode. Philip Glenister’s been charged with murder and the evidence is against him; with replacement DCI Ralph Brown in to oversee the case, John Simm feels the pressure to put Glenister away.

Only if Glenister did it, there wouldn’t be an episode, so Simm is out to prove his innocence, even as the rest of the team falls away. It’s good though, because when there’s a lengthy chase sequence of Glenister and Simm outwitting Dean Andrews and Marshall Lancaster, the episode’s easily at its best. Having Glenister forced to spend an episode with Simm and rely upon him… there’s a lot of good bicker banter. Plus the investigation scenes make more senes when it’s Glenister and Simm; they’re actually able to talk it out, giving “Mars” its first crime scene investigation since the beginning of the season. Simm and Glenister are excellent actors and this episode gets to showcase their ability more than most have been lately.

The frame-up involves a fight promoter, Seamus O’Neill, who Glenister testifies against in court. Glenister gets blasted afterwards and goes harassing O’Neill, with Simm as a witness, including brandishing a firearm. So apparently Glenister checked out a pistol for court duty. Okay.

After leaving a drunken Glenister to roam the streets of Manchester, Simm goes home and passes out, leading to a dream sequence, in which he gets an ominous call about being asked for help and to provide it. So who’s calling for help when the phone wakes Simm up? Glenister over O’Neill’s dead body, his gun on the scene.

The coppers arrive and take Glenister in and then Simm meets Brown, who’s from the same police station (“Hyde”) where Simm is supposedly from but they don’t know each other. They do have some similar detecting techniques, which Lancaster in particular notices. This first act of the episode is about the only time there’s anything for Liz White to do, because once Simm teams up with Glenister, there’s no time for girls. Not when Simm has also got to keep Brown at bay.

The resolution requires Simm and Glenister to be particularly bad coppers—they did a silly bad job on the initial case with O’Neill, which we all discover together in one of the suspect interviews—but it’s mostly forgivable. There’s a solid ending, right up until we find out this episode answers a question brewing and usually forgotten since the first episode of the season—who’s calling Simm from a Hyde number?

Life on Mars (2006) s02e06

It says a little bit too much about “Life on Mars” series two the writer tasked with resolving the “boyfriend in a coma, it’s really serious” arc presumably going on in future with Archie Panjabi, Simm’s girlfriend in the pilot episode who was kidnapped and apparently rescued; it’s been a season and a half and it’s time for Panjabi to move back.

I wanted to give “Mars” the benefit of the doubt and think Panjabi was just busy with her career but not so much looking at her filmography for those years. If they just waited to do this episode, without having a single Panjabi reappearance between… the show’s got such a distressing overall arc and so many missed narrative opportunities.

Panjabi’s back this episode in the present to dump Simm in his coma and move on with her life. In the past, he’s working a case where a recent Ugandan Asian immigrant ends up dead in his record shop and everyone thinks it’s drug related except Simm. Simm’s got to solve the case without any help from Philip Glenister, who’s too racist to actually work the case and instead wants to let respectable drug kingpin Ian Puleston-Davies kill the competition and keep drugs away from kids. It’s amazing Glenister is able to keep the character as sympathetic as he manages.

The mystery itself is rather compelling, definitely the best one of the season. There’s a stoner dealer, Tim Plester, the missing brother of the victim and Glenister’s number one suspect, Phaldut Sharma, and then Alex Reid as the victim’s girlfriend. Simm and Reid bond because they’re both dating East Asians and experience racism. There are some big, obvious differences, but suffice to say, when Simm is grandstanding to everyone about how he was a thoughtful boyfriend to Panjabi, it’s hard to believe.

There’s a cringe-y scene in the conclusion with Reid and Simm—mostly about Simm’s intent—and the episode’s way too easy on Glenister, completely copping out of dealing with the racism.

Good direction from Andrew Gunn, who scales to the various places the episode wanders; except with the opening Panjabi stuff, which seems like they’re using old footage repurposed and it immediately feels desperate. There are a number of desperate moves in the episode, which end up mostly fine thanks to the acting.

Reid’s never quite singular enough, especially given the desperate moves in her arc, but she’s good. It’s clear early on the show’s not delivering on the character front, rather the mystery.

It’s nice for the episode not to have any glaring problems though. Even if it’s unclear Jenkin’s aware he’s recycling plot points from first season episode, not to mention White doing her obviously unwarranted jealousy gag again.

Okay, so, a couple bumpy points. But overall, it’s the more successful episode in a while.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e05

It’s a Matthew Graham episode, where he definitely goes far in showing I was right to dread Matthew Graham episodes.

After a delightful claymation opening, John Simm wakes to a phone call from the station. They need him there ASAP. He’s been out a day sick, which we’ll later find out is closer to two days. Why’s he been sick? They gave him speed in the future. He gets messages from his doctors who address him directly, except there’s no continuity between the doctors. The O.D. manifests in coma-land like a common cold, though there’s eventually an explanation for it, which also has Simm gaining the superpower of being able to flashback into a character’s story if they touch him.

But only for the stuff he’s missed since being out sick because I’m pretty sure he touches the killer and we don’t get a flashback to the crime.

The superpower goes away when Simm gets better, but it’s interesting to think what they could’ve done with Simm getting level ups in the Matrix and having it matter to the story instead of it just being a way to fill time and dump exposition.

The emergency is civilian Reece Dinsdale threatening to hang himself in the police station unless the cops release Adam Beresford from prison. One year before there was a murder case and the coppers had a fast, guaranteed result with Beresford. Only when Philip Glenister tells it to Simm as part of a narrated flashback exposition dump—not sure why Simm didn’t just touch him for a segue—it’s obvious Glenister banged the kid up and made him plea when he wasn’t guilty.

Only the show doesn’t ask the viewer to acknowledge it until much later in the episode, which doesn’t say a lot for Graham’s trust in his target audience.

There’s some funny flashbacks with Marshall Lancaster having a mustache. Glenister has an okay arc; he’s convinced Beresford’s guilty and resents Simm’s distrust in him. It’s a very simple kind of character development, but it’s something. Like, Glenister’s better than the script and makes it happen.

Liz White gets to do a bunch of the actual investigating—Simm spends a large portion of the episode unconscious but able to watch the goings on with his fellow coppers; so he’s in a coma imagining he’s unconscious in a false reality while then observing that false reality without interacting.

Did the better directors on the series just make it all seem less pedestrian in the gimmick, I wonder. Andrew Gunn does an all right job but it’s not anything special.

Nice use of Roxy Music, which figures into the subplot where Simm uses the information he mind-read from White to ask her on a date. It’s okay because he’s just imagining her.

Anyway. Good support from the suspects and victims this episode. There are more than usual—four or five fairly active ones—and they’re all quite good. “Mars” doesn’t often rely on a set of usual suspects, but it clearly could if it wanted.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e04

So this response is going to be about the importance of show bibles for consistency’s sake, not even continuity. Or at least the first few paragraphs. And I just remembered where I heard of show bibles–“Star Trek.” The phaser rifle was only used in the pilots even though it was in the show bible as available for the rest of the series. Broke Chekov’s gun, didn’t it.

Anyway.

“Life on Mars” doesn’t seem to have a show bible but it also doesn’t have any reliable consistency, which affects the verisimilitude as well as the potential for character development.

Co-creator Ashley Pharoah’s got the writer credit this episode and it initially gave me comfort—one of the three creators must have some idea what’s going on in the show. Turns out… not really.

Like when John Simm meets someone he knows from the future and acts threateningly weird, even though he’s been having this same experience since the first episode of the show and then almost every episode afterwards. It sort of seems like it’s to remain accessible to new viewers but the show’s not actually episodic enough? It’s weird and they should have it figured out halfway through the second season.

Then there’s Liz White’s understanding of Simm’s condition. Condition meaning her new boss and usually unrequited love interest (usually love interest, not occasionally not unrequited) Simm always talking about how he’s in a coma in the future and just imagining all this stuff. White needs to be reminded of it almost every time he brings it up in the second season because she’s forgotten since getting her promotion.

It means White’s character never gets to develop when there always need to be a restart. Every episode has them ostensibly building the White and Simm subplot but they always reset it so it never actually builds up. One step forward, two steps back. And now I’m remembering what the second season was like to watch the first time through.

I wonder if I ranted about show bibles back then too.

This episode’s about young women ending up murdered and dumped. The solution’s going to involve key parties thrown by sleazy but seemingly harmless car salesman Nicholas Palliser and his wife, Eva Pope. White and Simm pose as a married couple while Philip Glenister, Dean Andrews, and Marshall Lancaster bitch about having to work surveillance.

The investigation stuff is a good episode for White and Simm; White especially. Glenister eventually gets some great comic moments. The A plot works. It’s just everything else, except maybe Lancaster getting dating advice from Simm, is way too thin.

Also the one of the only established character traits White does have is being jealous of Simm and a female guest when the show goes out of its way to establish to the viewer there’s nothing going on. It’s like they gave White a promotion this episode so they could demote her character development.

So, it’s a pretty mediocre episode (for the always well-acted, always well-produced show). It’s entertaining enough, with some great jokes but it doesn’t add up to anything.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e03

New writer (Julie Rutterford) and director (Richard Clark) to the show this episode; they do a fine job, Rutterford even getting to approach some character development for John Simm as far as his relationships with his teammates. There’s not a lot, there’s nothing conclusive, but there’s more to it than usual because Simm’s big mouth gets someone else hurt.

The episode opens with two doctors in the present talking about coma Simm’s mental state; the one on the TV thinks he’s doing fine, the one on the radio thinks he isn’t. While the present directly impacting the past (or imagined past, however you want to define Simm’s condition and the show’s reality) is now an episode and series standard, there really aren’t any rules to it. It’s a B plot directly and obviously affecting the A plot but the only time Simm acknowledges it is in the B plot. Even though he’s making all sorts of bad calls in the A plot and he probably ought to see the connection.

There are going to be a series of IRA bombings, only Simm considers himself an expert in IRA terrorism and he knows there’s no IRA attacks using dynamite in 1973 and so it’s all got to be a hoax. It takes until after one of his teammates gets hurt, after he can’t remember how to disarm the next bomb, does he finally consider the possibility there’s really a series of bombings happening. He spends most of the time—outside the actual bomb action—arguing with Philip Glenister and Liz White about how he’s got to be right.

All the evidence points to Irish workers who want a living wage, with main suspect Brendan Mackey having stolen dynamite from his workplace, a construction company run by Peter Wight. Simm’s going to spend most of the episode protecting Mackey from the rest of the team, occasionally in amusing scenes, but Mackey’s a sturdy guest star not some kind of standout. It’s Simm’s show and it doesn’t help when he spends the entire episode looking like an unsympathetic asshole to everyone else.

Particularly White.

There’s a lot about the British being xenophobic about the Irish, with the promise of actual racism around the corner thanks to East Asian immigrants. It even makes a joke about it; maybe the episode’s strangest moment. Not sure why they needed to include it. The show’s got so many layers and it only acknowledges a few of them, but sometimes it seems like “Mars” doesn’t get at least a couple of other really obvious, important ones.

Especially when you lay over the whole “coma fever dream from Simm’s perspective” thing.

Though the season did establish Simm can change the future from the past, which seemingly didn’t make the show bible because the resolve this episode should’ve made it into Simm’s past future studies of the past.

It’s a really good episode for Dean Andrews. It’s a good episode for everyone, though it’s just too thin for Simm.

“Mars” is tricky because it’s so well-produced, so well-acted, the lack of overall show direction makes for a very sore thumb.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e02

Thank goodness for S.J. Clarkson. There’s also a bunch of good acting in this episode, but Clarkson’s direction is what holds it all together because Chris Chibnall’s script certainly isn’t doing the trick.

Chibnall has two emphases this episode—first, lengthy exposition sequences with John Simm and Philip Glenister recapping information the viewer has seen play out on screen with Simm and sometimes even Glenister, but we have to hear it again to set up Glenister for a joke. It’s like a sitcom. Glenister can get through most of them, with a solid result in the joke section, but even he can’t maintain through the entire episode, getting very tired in the last few of expository dump sequences.

The other emphases is guest star Ray Emmet Brown, a Black copper in 1973 Manchester who’ll grow up to be Simm’s mentor in the apparently post-racial present. There are two to three scenes of Simm telling Brown not to be an Uncle Tom, though only one time literally calling him an Uncle Tom and telling him to stop it. Brown does get to tell Simm his feelings, but Simm ignores them and tells Brown how it’s got to be.

Not so Brown can make things better for other Black officers, but so he’s in a position to help white boy Simm twenty years in the future.

There seems to be a potential juxtaposition between Simm mentoring his own mentor with Glenister’s mentor Kevin McNally hanging around for the episode. McNally’s dying and wants to just his arch nemesis (Stephen Bent) before he goes, but he doesn’t want Glenister knowing he’s dying. The juxtapose doesn’t work because Chibnall’s not really good enough at it. Especially not with the twists and reveals, though the grand finale is pretty good and finally gives Brown a solid scene where he’s not scene fodder for Simm.

The episode’s got some decent set pieces, including an all-hands-on-deck undercover sequence—including Noreen Kershaw, who rarely gets to leave the station—and the sequence is well-executed until it turns out to be dramatically pointless and just something Chibnall’s got in there so not everything is talking heads exposition. Most of the episode is Simm talking to someone or someone talking to Simm about the main plot. All the action is in the first act, something composer Edmund Butt seems to understand more than anyone else because he’s got very dramatic, very ominous music in the rest of the episode even when it’s just people talking without there being any danger.

One of those scenes is Liz White, who should have a much bigger part this episode given it’s her first case as Detective Constable (DC). She gets some good material but once it turns into Glenister and Simm’s team-up—someone calls them “Laurel and Hardy” at one point and it’s way too clearly Chibnall’s take on the characters and show—she’s just vaguely around. She’s Simm’s sounding board for work ideas, which is probably better than being his emotional laborer regarding being trapped in the past.

At least he doesn’t tell her what it’s like to be a woman copper in 1973.

It’s an okay episode, but with some big whiffs in the Chibnall script; the production design, soundtrack, direction, and acting (like Dean Andrews finally getting to do some character development) all help compensate for most of the problem’s in Chibnall’s script.

Though nothing makes up for the pointless, single scene transphobic “gag,” or Brown getting the lectures.

“Mars” really needs to temper its ambitions and leverage its strengths more.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e01

Series two starts with S.J. Clarkson directing, which is good, and Matthew Graham writing, which is middling. Graham’s leaning in on the “present affects the past,” with a villain terrorizing comatose John Simm in the hospital and the only way Simm can save himself is confronting the bad guy in the past.

Marc Warren’s actually really good as the bad guy, he’s just not really in the episode very much. He has like three or four scenes—he’s a casino owner who comps the cops, so everyone but Simm loves him—and in the present it’s all voiceover and ominous imagery. Clarkson can make “Mars” work as it skips between locations and tones in the past, but making the ominous present-day imagery work? Nope. No one could.

Because even though Graham’s all-in on the Simm is in a coma in the present… the show itself isn’t, because then there’s no actual drama.

It plays out fairly well in the episode (there’s nothing more frustrating than a script with good scenes but bad, albeit occasionally inspired plotting), even if the whole episode does serve as a lengthy setup to the new series two ground situation.

For instance, there a couple promotions in store for the cast members, which finally brings the team together.

Simm’s got a rougher part than he should this episode, as he continuously harasses Warren’s girlfriend and future wife and victim Yasmin Bannerman, including telling her all about what’s going to happen to her unless she listens to him. Again, Graham’s really lazy about the other characters when Simm’s having one of his outbursts because having them actually address it would entirely change the show.

Though Liz White does warn Simm multiple times he’s on his way to being involuntarily committed this episode, something they must’ve decided one somewhere between series one and series two. Apparently Philip Glenister can get anyone committed at any time.

Again, it’s a solid but problematic (more than actually bumpy, as the procedural stuff is strong) episode in a good show. Even with an iffy arc, Simm’s good, Glenister’s great, and nice support from White, Dean Andrews, and Marshall Lancaster.

Maybe the most galling thing in the episode is Simm being pointlessly cruel to Noreen Kershaw because it’s socially acceptable for him to be pointlessly cruel to women.

The big setup finale, with Starman accompanying the end credits, promises the season’s going to be good. And have an actual season subplot—Simm gets a mysterious call saying he can go home once he finishes his “assignment”—instead of it being shoehorned in….

“Life on Mars” is the odd example of a really good show with a whole bunch of problems. Though maybe that situation’s just the case for any genre mashup.

Life on Mars (2006) s01e08

It’s the season finale, which one would think means some questions are getting answered. It takes about a half hour until everything starts tying together—and it turns out all the season’s recurring “vision” sequences were pointless considering how quickly they get explained (sorry, I’m going to try not to be overly negative but the episode makes a big swing and misses, especially when you consider how it’s playing to anyone but John Simm’s character).

Matthew Graham is back as the solo writer, John Alexander is directing. I was happy to see both the credits.

By the end of the episode, well… it’s not Alexander’s fault the thing’s plotted and paced so poorly. The problems are clearly on Graham’s end, though also the casting director. Lee Ingleby has the most important part in the season and he’s really nowhere near good enough for it. Even taking the script into account.

Ingleby plays Simm’s dad, who he finally comes across randomly while investigating a gang war, and the episode is the cops (including Simm) turning up incriminating evidence against Ingleby and Simm trying to protect him. Joanne Froggatt comes back for a bit of a crap part (sorry, mum, the boys are talking; including a Field of Dreams “wanna have a catch”). Because it’s all about daddy issues for Simm, who hasn’t grown as a human being since he was four years old in 1973. Turns out “Life on Mars” has so many daddy issues it’d might even make Christopher Nolan tell them to be less obvious about it.

And they weren’t here before, not to this level. It’s inexplicable why the show wouldn’t have included a plot about Simm trying to find his dad in 1973 or whatever. Because it’s the whole thing. It’s the Atlas holding the world and Ingleby and Simm are nowhere near good enough to pull it off. It’s far more interesting, in the end, to try to imagine the whole thing from Ingleby’s perspective, which is a big problem since it’s all in Simm’s head.

Also it turns out Liz White would’ve made a far better protagonist since eventually she decides Simm’s actually got brain damage and maybe he should go to a doctor….

Something they maybe should’ve done a lot earlier in the show. Before she almost started dating him or whatever. And stopped him from committing suicide to break the coma spell so maybe she should’ve had an actual concern subplot.

Good acting, at times, from Simm. There are things he can sell, things he can’t. Sadly the important things he can’t. They’re just too thin.

Similarly, it doesn’t end up being a good show for Philip Glenister because his character’s got to act absurdly to allow the Simm plot line with Ingleby.

The episode even manages to miss with its big use of Life on Mars.

However, they are at least able to get it to a decent setup for another season, a very impressive feat given all the problems, because through it all… “Life on Mars” has a great regular cast and is exquisitely produced.

I am going to be terrified of any Graham solo scripts going forward though. Just the laziest writing, scene after scene. The show usually uses its sixty minutes well; this episode it plods through them, with about thirty minutes of story if they’re lucky.

Episode’s a bummer.

But not so much “Mars” isn’t still a good show.

Life on Mars (2006) s01e07

After a couple episodes not dealing too much with John Simm’s Sam Becket-esque attempts to get home, this episode brings that element in partway through an otherwise very straightforward whodunit about a dead prisoner.

The script’s from Chris Chibnall, who approaches it with quite a bit of gusto as far as giving the characters all something to do, though that something to do is because of the dead prisoner. There’s also some really nice direction from S.J. Clarkson, who doesn’t do it as a procedural. Simm is investigating—at the behest of Philip Glenister, who’d rather the whole thing went away but Simm’s making a stink—and running afoul of his fellow officers, including Liz White.

There’s a lot of character relationship building for Simm and the entire supporting cast this time, not just White or Glenister, but Marshall Lancaster, Noreen Kershaw, and finally some development with Dean Andrews. Until the whole thing becomes about Simm just wanting to get back home. Only White understands the reason for Simm’s question to destroy his colleagues, which ends up muddying the water more than anything else. If Simm’s trying to solve it because it’s the right thing to do versus what he’s got to do in order to wake up from his presumed coma….

Unfortunately Chibnall quadruples down on the latter, going so far as for Simm to explain to White he needs her to stick around to handle all of his emotional labor. Sinnerman over the end titles or not, it’s a rather wanting finish; somehow in the last twenty or so minutes of the episode, Chibnall identifies all the problems with the show’s conceit and drags them to the fore.

Really good acting from the entire cast, save maybe Simm, who’s good but nowhere near good enough to save it. On the other hand, it’s best in series acting for Andrews and Lancaster (partially because it’s the most they’ve ever gotten to do). Same goes for Kershaw, but in the extremis. She’s usually background. Here she’s essential.

And Glenister’s got some great moments. Especially when he and Simm have a working dinner, sort of precipitating the whole thing, but it’s all about Simm. When it’s about the investigation, it’s good. When it’s about Simm hoping it’ll be the leap home… it’s fine but rote.

The emotional labor demand scene is a particularly big strike against it, given White’s convinced Simm is gleefully willing to ruin her career.

Excellent performance from Lisa Millett as the victim’s sister; she disappears just when she ought to be coming back (corresponding to Simm trying to work the leap home angle). However, while Chibnall’s uneven overall, Clarkson’s direction is strong the entire time. She kind of saves the day.

Well, her and Nina Simone.