Life on Mars 1x01 - Pilot review

The first few minutes of a TV pilot are massively important. A show has to hook viewers in quickly, lest the entire series get written off as dull or lackluster. The writing must be sharp and distinctive, the acting deft and subtle, and the directing offbeat enough to set it apart from everything else on the air. Not unlike a job interview, watching a pilot puts the viewer in the employer’s seat. We want to know in five to fifteen minutes why we should hire this show for the privileged position of “series recording” on our DVRs. A viewer internally asks him or herself during these first crucial minutes, “What can I get from this show that I can’t already find in half a dozen other things on the air?”

We’ve all experienced the sad sense of loss when we find out after the fact that a show we wrote off as not grabbing us enough in the pilot turns out to be well-liked among our friends, family, and colleagues. I admit to doing this with Bones, Prison Break, and 24, and while someday I might catch up with these shows on DVD, I simply haven’t had the time thus far. I kick myself whenever yet another person tells me how great they all are, but I still maintain that none of them grabbed me in the pilot, thus sentencing them to time served in my personal schedule of Must See Only-if-I-Ever-Actually-Feel-Like-It TV.

So, what makes a perfect pilot in my eyes, then? Sometimes the best pilots turn into the most yawn-worthy series. I loved the pilot of the Night Stalker revival when I saw a preview of it at Comic-Con '05, but when the series finally got going, I literally fell asleep during every episode. The pilot of Veronica Mars, on the other hand, got me so excited that I watched a season’s worth of recorded reruns over the course of a single week. Both pilots, though they were for wildly different types of shows, had one important thing in common: they featured elements then-unlike anything else on network television.

I guess the fact that I am now thoroughly in love with Life on Mars just goes to show you that some shows can overcome a dull opening sequence to a pilot and surprise you with something daring, beautiful, and completely fresh. With Life on Mars, none of the usual rules apply, and that only makes me love it more.

Ever since going obsessively ga-ga over the 2005 revivial of Doctor Who, I’ve been searching for the next cool BBC series to capture my attention. I briefly tried out Hex when it debuted on BBC America in the early summer of ’06, but gave up when it seemed the major story arc was far less important than bad post-hipster retro fashions and appalling abuse of hairspray. Life on Mars was the next BBCA debut I tried out, and all my decision-making criteria went out the window.

To judge the series by the first half of the pilot is to completely miss out on everything wonderful, bizarre, effective, and philosophically ground-breaking about Life on Mars -- this show is essentially four different concepts which alone could comprise individual series. This is a narrative that blends multiple disparate genres and thus is never quite the same from moment to moment. Is this a gritty period crime drama? A science fiction time travel yarn? A psychological noir? Or a neo-Buddhist allegory?

The answer is "all of the above," but you wouldn’t know any of this from the opening of the pilot. The opening of the pilot, in fact, well and truly sucks. It's slow and makes one think it has nothing better to offer the viewer than a straightforward take on modern police procedurals, albeit with a typically English cast and sensibility. First, we meet earnest but mildly jaded young detective, Sam Tyler (John Simm, 24 Hour Party People), trying to catch a serial killer and using all the best modern technology available in his sterilely efficient investigations office. Of course there’s an office romance with idealistic fellow detective Maya Roy (Archie Panjabi), of course Maya’s naïve desire to investigate the case at all costs leads to her abduction, and of course Sam goes to rescue her. Boring! Even though there's nothing particularly wrong with it, quality-wise, it's the sort of thing we've seen too many times before.

Somewhere during the final strains of the too-obvious use of David Bowie’s titular song as the montage music for Sam’s pursuit of Maya, though, things get weird... and wonderfully so.

Suddenly, Sam is hit by a car, and when he awakens, we’re no longer in 2006 but 1973. Sam isn't listening to an iPod but an eight-track player. He’s still a detective at the same police precinct with the same name, but his chief and co-workers are all different. The entire world has been set back thirty-three years for no apparent reason. There’s still a murder case to be solved, but it’s now completely incidental to the psychological issues with which Sam now wrestles. Is he crazy, dreaming, or did he actually go back in time?

Certainly, the marketing of Life on Mars helped to ensure that I would realize the initial premise of a stereotypical cop show was a misnomer. If I hadn’t, I can honestly say I wouldn’t have kept watching. While no twisty multi-genre program wants to show its whole hand in the first few seconds of the pilot, sometimes a little tease is necessary. Life on Mars succeeds in pulling the viewer in despite not giving up the first big reveal for quite a while into the premiere. For anyone who was actually intrigued by the prospect of sitting through a straightforward crime series, however, they would’ve been thoroughly disappointed by the last half of the pilot.

It’s a tricky game, then. On one hand, there is a creative need to surprise the viewer, but on the other, too much surprise can give a completely false impression of the entire premise. By revealing the premise in previews and advertisements, Life on Mars loses its shock value but guarantees that the sort of audience who will most fully appreciate the show actually tunes in. Is this an artistic sacrifice for the sake of ratings? Maybe. But ultimately, I’m glad I knew what I was getting into, because otherwise the prospect of a British Law and Order would have turned me off. A British Law and Order-meets-Lost with a dash of Davids Lynch and Cronenberg, however, is immensely satisfying.