TCA Sneak Peek - Life on Mars
One minute you’re a New York police detective in the year 2008, a man who relies on the latest technology and techniques to solve crimes. The next minute – BAM! – you get hit by a car. When you wake up, you’re still a New York police detective… in the year 1973.
That’s Life on Mars in a nutshell, an adaptation of a popular British series that hits American TV screens this fall. Show producers Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec joined series stars Jason O’Mara and Michael Imperioli onstage at the TCAs to roll out the intriguing new show to the press.
Irish actor Jason O’Mara plays Detective Sam Tyler, the time-tossed police officer who has to figure out how to navigate this alien landscape of cultural upheaval and political unrest. The Vietnam War, Watergate, women’s lib, the civil rights and gay rights movement are all thrown in the mix as Sam tries to adjust to the culture shock and make it as a cop on the mean streets of 1973.
“Sam is seeing the world through the audience’s point of view,” said Appelbaum, who produced October Road and Alias with his partner Nemec. He sees some similarities between those two series and Life on Mars, which will be a bit of a fusion between the engrossing ongoing storyline in Alias and the character-driven drama of October Road.
Michael Imperioli, who we all know as Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos, will play Detective Ray Carling, a tough, two-fisted cop who butts heads and works alongside Sam’s time cop. Imperioli was ecstatic to work on a series shot in New York.
But what about filming on location? Is there anywhere in New York that doesn’t have a Starbucks on the corner and still has that Seventies vibe?
“We’ve found plenty of locations that still have that look,” Nemec said. “Places like Queens where they still have blocks and blocks of these old brownstones. We definitely shouldn’t have any problems finding places to shoot.”
I’ve always loved fish-out-of-water stories and I am a total sucker for Seventies cop dramas so I’m looking forward to seeing how 21st century Sam solves crimes in a precinct full of cops who have never seen a cell phone or used a computer. And although this is a cop show, the producers insist the heart of the series is Sam’s relationships with his fellow cops and the strange world around him. A sort of romantic triangle develops between Sam, his girlfriend in distant 2008, and Officer Annie Norris, a smart female cop who is struggling to prove herself equal to her male colleagues in a sexist workplace.
Life on Mars will follow Grey’s Anatomy on the fall schedule, and Jason O’Mara will no doubt look familiar to Grey’s viewers. Remember him? He was the handsome dude who played Bear Attack / Brain Tumor Guy on a couple of episodes this season. No, that wasn’t his character’s name – although that would have been funny if it was. I think Grey's viewers will dig the relationship drama on the show, and it doesn't hurt that O'Mara is easy to look at. The guy rocks the polyester bell bottoms big time.
We’ll lay some more details on you as they become available, but for now I’m just excited to see what these guys come up with. The original BBC series was excellent, so they’ve got big shoes to fill, but judging from their enthusiasm for the project it looks like it’s going to be huge.
--Dave Campbell
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