So – last night was the debut of the American version of Life On Mars. For those of you that watched it: what did you think?
I myself was fairly pleased. Let me say this straight away: no remake of the show can be as good as the original. Full stop, period dot. Keeping that in mind, the American version is pretty faithful to the original.
Lisa Bonet plays Maya, Sam’s girlfriend. Changing her from Asian (Indian) to black makes sense, I suppose.
Unlike that godawful pilot episode leaked earlier this year, the “new and improved” Life On Mars US features Michael Imperioli as Ray Carling and Jonathan Murphy as Chris Skelton – two characters completely absent from the first pilot. I’m not sure that I’m digging either character at this moment – for some reason, Imperioli’s sarcastic Carling just rubs me the wrong way, but not in the same way that the original Ray did.
Annie Cartwright’s character was played by Rachelle Lefèvre in the failed pilot. Her version of Annie was an already street-smart detective that got a fair amount of acclaim from her co-workers. Lefèvre was dumped for Gretchen Mol, who plays Annie Norris (no idea about the name change), a meek character far closer to the “original” Annie. You know – a smart girl trapped in the “Womens Police Force”, busy making coffee and cleaning the station houses than doing actual police work. While Mol’s acting is fine, I’m not sure I buy her as Annie Cartwright. She’s too pretty. Liz White is the type of girl that really isn’t immediately pretty, but after watching several episodes, she sort of slowly “gets pretty”. At any rate, at least they’ve brought back the “suffering Annie” plotline. The whole basis of Sam and Annie’s relationship is that she’s smart as a whip, but trapped in a “housekeeping” job, and that Sam is the only one that appreciates her intellect. With that dynamic gone in the original pilot, the plot suffered terribly. I’m glad it’s back.
The most important recast from the failed pilot was the dumping of Colm Meaney for Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt. Look, Meaney is a fine actor. But he completely lacks the bombast of Hunt’s character. And the poor guy is smaller than Jason O’Mara! Remember when Glenister would grab Simm by the collar and shout in his face? That simply wouldn’t have worked with Meaney. It can work for Keitel… but whether it does or not is up in the air. Philip Glenister’s Gene Hunt is one of the best characters to come across the TV screen in years. And Glenister is still playing Hunt in Ashes to Ashes. It’ll be hard for Keitel to make this character his own without pissing off a lot of existing fans. I can certainly make an intellectual distinction between the US and UK versions of the show, but to me there will always be one Gene Hunt, and that is Philip Glenister. I just hope Keitel doesn’t “cheese it up”. Yes, you could say that Hunt is, in a way, a cartoon. But playing him over the top misses his essential humanity. Sure, he might outrageously break laws himself in order to catch lawbreakers, but it’s due to Hunt’s inherent sense of justice – even if he is a sexist, racist homophobe himself. Hunt is both simple and complex, and let’s hope that Harvey Keitel aims for both.
As for the show itself, I think the producers did a pretty good job. No, it can never be the original, but I like some of the “little changes” they made. I like, for example, that they wrapped up Maya’s storyline in one episode (in the original, she doesn’t show up again until like the 4th episode, and you never know what, exactly, happened to her). Dumping Annie’s psychologist boyfriend seems like a wise move, too. Look folks, there’s gonna be a lot of stuff cut from the original series to make the show fit into a 42 minute timeslot, and so far they’ve done a pretty good job at knowing what to trim away.
The show also looked pretty good. Not enough smoking, of course, but at least they’re not doing the “establishing shots… with ashtrays!” like the pilot did. I loved the Big Reveal early in the episode. Although it was done with as much CGI as the first episode, this was (technically) a lot better, plus it struck our heart strings, which the revel in the original pilot did not.
All in all… a pretty impressive showing for the American version. I hope they keep it up!