Sam Tyler had to endure yet another episode of Life on Mars where he was right (‘it’s not the IRA!’) but his belligerent colleagues refused to believe him until he had irrefutable proof. Surely by now even his misanthropic, racist boss Gene Hunt would have stopped in his tracks – just for a moment – to wonder, ‘why is this guy always right?’
Hunt was determined to thwart on IRA campaign by arresting anyone whose surname began with an “O” – before indulging in a bit of ‘Paddy’ bashing. Now, I don’t remember the 1970s – mainly because I wasn’t born (the parents were only nippers) but I always imagine it to be brown and dingy yellow and the Life on Mars set certainly seems steeped in these grim tones. Maybe on the first day of 1980 people had to be treated for shock because they saw the colour red for the first time.
Already half way through what is the last ever series, it is difficult to know where this will go – will we ever find out why Sam Tyler is in the 1973 coma – if that’s what it is? And if he suddenly wakes up, won’t it be ever-so-slightly contrived? Still, I can only trust in the excellent writing so far, even if Sam’s coma trauma tends to manifest in sinister TV characters and an irritatingly smug mystery caller on a brown bakelite phone. The best line of the night was in the pub when Sam tried to explain why a traumatised Ray was behaving oddly, “He’s got PTSD” he said. Hunt was appalled. “He’s a bloody hero, and you’re saying he’s got the clap!”
Interview with a Poltergeist, followed up on the story of the ‘poltergeist’ found in North London in 1977 where furniture, fireplaces and children alike were thrown across various rooms. Seeing the original police interview of the time only served to make Life on Mars seem like a biting piece of 1970s realism – “W”PCs with flicked hair and clipped accents and scruffy looking men with bushy unkempt collar length mops and beige tank tops.
The scariest thing about the whole show was not the undoubtedly weird ‘paranormal’ activity but the state of one the girls, Janet Hodgson, now – skeletal, pale with long witch-like hair, she spoke through sallow cheeks with all the clarity and articulation of Pete Doherty after a heavy night in China Whites. I’m hoping this is less a result of heroin and more a result of long standing physic trauma from being dragged out of bed of a night by an irate dead pensioner.
The fabulous looking paranormal investigator, complete with crazy moustache and bottle-bottom glasses, had sadly died by the time the programme was aired. Hopefully for him, the riddle of that house has now been solved since the show left the viewer with no answers at all and a frustratingly balanced perspective.
Love the 1970s? Believe in ghosts? Chillywinter@hotmail.co.uk
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