Walls and Bridges:
by Joel Meadows

1-12-06

There’s one nice thing about the period after Christmas over here (and it’s certainly not the weather: intermittently dank and depressing until the end of February usually): after being fed a staple diet of shite like an ancient Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, Only Fools and Horses for the four millionth time or Showjumper of the Year, January sees the launch of lots of pretty decent television series. Battlestar Galactica started again on Sky One but I’m not going to talk about that. Last Monday, 9th January, saw the transmission of two programmes on different channels that made it worth staying in for. Firstly Channel 4 showed The Root of All Evil, where popular science maven Richard Dawkins argued that religion was the cause of all the world’s strife. Dawkins went to see a cross section of people including a psychotic-looking Ned Flanders figure in the South of the States, a New York Jew who had converted to Islam and a group of atheists also in the States. Dawkins made a compelling argument and it will be interesting to see part two which is on next Monday.

Equally as impressive was the debut of Life on Mars, a new eight part drama series starring John Simm, who has appeared in things like Cracker and The Lakes. In recent years, British TV has had a definite dearth of quality drama preferring to make cheap and nasty (and admittedly very lucrative) reality TV shows like the insidious Big Brother and vapid home and property shows like Changing Rooms. Life on Mars stars Simm as DCI Sam Tyler, a policeman who has a car accident and suddenly finds himself in Manchester of 1973. He doesn’t know how he got there and he has to come to terms with the different attitudes, people and entertainment of thirty plus years ago. He also has to work with throwback copper Gene, deftly played by Philip Glenister, on a murder case that echoes the one he was working on back in 2006. It’s been done before in film like Back To the Future but the team here have managed to create a real sense of time and place that rings true, aided by an excellent cast. David Bowie’s Life on Mars is playing on Tyler’s iPod in his car when he has the accident and it’s playing again when he wakes up in 1973, only this time it’s on the eight track in his Seventies Rover. It’s a very neat segue indeed.

It’s going to be hard to know whether they can keep the momentum and invention going over a whole series but I’ll certainly be checking it out.