Life on Mars

[clocketpatch]

Walmart has actually come through for once. Though I totally nicked the last copy in the store (actually, I think it was the only copy the store had, period, but whatever)

I'm hooked. Damnit! I just spent six episodes glued to the screen being absolutely entranced by how marvelously wonderfully amazing this show is. I already want series two. Why are there only eight episodes? Whhhy???

Everyone who recommends this show is right.

My mother was hooked to it as well, and it's so rare to find something we both love now a days. I think it helped that the one time she visited the UK was in 1973. So she just keeps pointing at things and nodding.

I've only got two problems with it:

One: I love Simm's character to bits, but every so often he step over the boundary into preachey-obnoxious land, and I just want to give him a smack.

and

Two: I keep picturing him in dress and laughing inappropriately, causing my mother to give me strange looks.

Comments

[librarylover82.livejournal.com]

I am jealous, because I like Life on Mars very much. Have you seen Ashes to Ashes? It is the sequel, set in the 1980's.

[clocketpatch]

I've not finished watching the first series of Life on Mars yet! Though I have heard of Ashes to Ashes, and I look forward to all that in time, provided I can A. find it B. afford it

[librarylover82.livejournal.com]

I LOVE this icon!

[clocketpatch]

I love it too!

It was made by zed_pm, and is, as far as I know, completely gankable.

[abbyromana.livejournal.com]

I've seen the U.K version and I loved it too! :)
However, I know what you mean about Simm's character.He can be borderline annoying on doing the right thing. Yet, it's him taking that led that ends up making the difference in the stories. I truly feel sorry for him, but at the same time, I think as I watch I think he's better off there than back in modern day. ;)

[clocketpatch]

Yes. Though occasionally annoying, his attitude *works* and *makes sense in context* which is all I ask really. Also, they break up the lectures with the jokes which is key.

The political commentary may not always be subtle, but it's a helluva a lot more subtle than certain other things Simm has been appearing in lately. *cough* icon *cough*

And they mentioned Who in one of the episodes. Which made me squee with geekish delight (even if I didn't catch the whole line because my mother was trying to verbally figure out a plot point)

[greatbriton.livejournal.com]

oooh I love Life on Mars! so freaking good

[clocketpatch]

It is! It is! I knew it was going to be good, but I wasn't sure if it could be so completely awesome as everyone kept saying, I mean, but WOW it totally, totally is. :D

[alouzon.livejournal.com]

Yay, I'm glad you got a copy!

Mmmm... John Simm....





OK, I'm back.

[clocketpatch]

It totally made me Christmas, right there. I've still got two episodes to watch but my mother's out and has forbid me from watching them without her.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Now, Gene Hunt would sort out the Master pretty quickly, I'd imagine.

[clocketpatch]

Indeed he would! lol!fit I kind of love how incredibly small Simm is next to him. And the fact that Gene responds to everything by punting Sam in the kidneys. Their random fisticuffs are epic.

[john_amend_all]

Were you thinking of Delgado (who'd be appropriate for the period), Season 29 Simm or last Friday's Simm?

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's ever been a show that's blown me away so completely as LoM did. It's the stuff of legend now. I can't imagine having to wait a week to see the next episode--one of my friends and I watched it together and on two separate occasions we watched five episodes in a row (which is doubtless why they tend to run together when I think back on them, but I don't care!).

If anything, S2 is even better. The next-to-last episode is my very favorite, though they're all damn good. Wait till you get to A2A!

[clocketpatch]

I've thrown budgeting and common sense to the wind to buy series 2 on an Amazon boxing day deal. It should arrive in 2-4 weeks. I don't know how I'll wait that long. Stuff of legend is the way to describe it.

[thisbluespirit]

I'm so glad you like it! It blew me away, too, although I nearly didn't watch it, because the only whole episode I caught, other than the last was ep 7, which is written by that Man of Evil, Chris Chibnall and I thought, "Hmm, and it looked so much better in the last five mins of ep 1." Luckily, I caught the last episode after all, and was hooked. I had to get the DVDs to see the other eps eventually, but was glue to S2 and A2A when it was on.

I can see how watching it after Simm was the Master rather than before, as those of us over here, did, could be very disturbing. Poor Sam. Heh.

But, I'm bouncing about happily here to think you like it; it just isn't like anything else that I can think of. Might well be the UK's TV show of the decade in my book. (Although that does include Spooks, and that was also Kudos and also ground-breaking when it started - it's just easier to forget that, since 2002. Obviously, DW returned, but, no - Spooks or LoM, definitely!)

[clocketpatch]

It really didn't help that he's blond and borderline scruffy in it, let me tell you. He'd grin just so every now and then, or start shouting at nothing, and I'd be getting trippy batshitcrazySimm!Master flashbacks. Especially the dress. And the turkey. And the one scene where I kept expecting energy bolts...

Yeah, my room mates are going to be expressly forbidden from watching the End of Time until they've sat through LoM. I need to save them that trauma.

But it is *good* even the Chibnall, and I did freak out slightly when I realized he was a main writer. But it's so beautifully directed and acted and... where has this been all my life? I love it to bits!

[thisbluespirit]

Yay! :-) I think it's a truly amazing show, so I'm so glad you think so, too. The first episode in particular, I think is outstanding.

Oh, yes, there's only 1 Chibnall episode per series, although he does some of the things that annoy me to death in TW still, but LoM greatness shines through. I just havem't quite forgiven him for very nearly making me not bother to watch it. I should, though.

Oh, and S2 has the Camberwick Green moment - my favourite thing on TV ever, ever. (Except I'm guessing you are a. much to young and b. too far on the other side of the Atlantic to have ever even heard of Camberwick Green. Heh.) That isn't a spoiler, btw. Just a throwaway thing that's about as awesome as you can get. If you watched Camberwick Green when you were little, that is.

Erm, sorry. I'm waffling. *coughs* *slips out the back*

[clocketpatch]

I've finished watching series two now. The ending has me absolutely gob-smacked. Very well done, and food for thought for a long time.

My favourite moment, now that I've seen all the episodes, is probably the "Oh Shit!" sign when they mess his meds up. It's so completely random. I laughed apple juice through my nose.

[thisbluespirit]

It is a very divisive ending. I like it and I think tere are lots of theories to be worked out from it, which is cool, but the literal facts of it are kind of bizarre - but I wonder if A2A will eventually shed more light on this. Very intriguing!

(And, btw, waiting a week was cool - they showed it in Feb/March time the first time around, and it lit up the dullest bit of the year with waiting for each ep to come round).

Heh! No, Camerbwick Green is the TV moment of the decade for me. Plasticene Gene and Sam, :lol:! ("Oh dear. Is he beating up a nonce?")

It is something else, though, and I'm so glad you got to see it and weren't disappointed.

(A2A, if you do get to see it, feels very different - Simm's absence takes some getting used to, but S1 is brilliantly circular. And oh-so-very 80s - I could get the visual humour in that one as I never could with LoM).

I watched the last episode with a friend who'd never seen the rest and she kept referring to Gene as the bad guy, and me and her other friend kept having to go, "No, no, it's not like that!" Ah, Gene Hunt is just fantastic. (And Philip Glenister for that matter.) And Liz White as Annie, yes.

I'll try and stop being incoherently gleeful that you like it now. ;-)

[clocketpatch]

Yes, yes, I do want to get a hold of Ashes and will make every effort to do so just as soon as they decide to release it in this region. Guh. I need to stop falling in love with foreign shows... they're expensive, difficult to get a hold of, and no one ever knows what I'm talking about...

I'm intrigued though, by the idea of seeing the LoM team working without Sam, because one of the things I thought was clever about the show was how Sam was ALWAYS on screen and you never saw anything he didn't (well... except when he was high that one time...). But given Annie's comment in the first episode about how, if she didn't exist, then she must blink out of existence every time she left the room... yes. Very well played by the production team.

(must've been a lot of work for Simm though, making me even more impressed with his acting skillz).

And Gene is fantastic. I think my room mate has made the same mistake. She stumbled in on him making some awful racist comment, as he does, and she was all :O

Now I need her to actually watch the show and find context.