Is there life in 1973? Is there life on mars? Is there life after the Doctor? Three perfect questions. As briefly mentioned in my 2008 wrap-up post, I got completely and utterly lost in the Whoniverse toward the end of last year. I kept hearing and reading from all sides how amazing the TV shows Doctor Who (2005) and Torchwood were, that I became more and more anxious to watch them. And then I did, and though I at first thought “Well, ´tis a bit trashy.”, I quickly learned to ignore the trashy bits and was completely blown away by the magical excitement of those shows. I guess I would have blogged about them, but I didn’t for three reasons; I already posted small reviews full of spoilers on my livejournal, one half of my readers wouldn’t have cared, and for the other half it just wouldn’t have been big news. (I guess it’s a bit like this entry. You probably won’t read it unless you’re a geek as huge as me).

I have to confess that I feel a bit drained after the Whoniverse. My enthusiasm for new TV shows is nowhere near as big, and it seems that after having met the Doctor, all other shows seem boring. It might have something to do with the shows I’m watching though. After a Christmas break, I started watching Veronica Mars. Slowly, and slower and slower. I think it’s a pretty good show in it’s own way, but 15 episodes in I’m still not hooked/fascinated/addicted/convinced (not even with Alyson Hannigan in it). The show is supposed to be Whedonesque, but did I mention I’m sometimes not very good with patience?!

So when I was at about episode 5 of Veronica Mars, I stumbled upon Life on Mars (UK) again. And it’s with John *gasp* The Master Simm! And I never noticed before (obviously, as I had not seen Doctor Who before). My brother had highly recommended Life on Mars about two years ago, back when he was working in Liverpool for a month. We watched an episode (1×03) together, but I wasn’t really hooked. I kept thinking that I should probably check it out someday, but those Manchester accents were a bit scary for my untrained-to-Manchester-accent-ears.

But now that I had risen to the next level of geekdom, I wasn’t too disinclined to watch John Simm in a completely different yet masterful role. So I did. Thankfully Life on Mars only has 16 episodes, so it wasn’t much of a task. And thankfully there are English subtitles for that show, so I could actually understand what they were saying.

Life on Mars is a show about detective Sam Tyler, who has a car accident in 2006 and wakes up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or back in time?! That’s a question he asks himself everyday, as he goes to work solving crimes the old-fashioned way in Manchester. In the meantime, he keeps hearing voices on the radio and machines beeping, reminding him and us that he’s still lying in a hospital bed somewhere. They give the show a deeper kind of emotional layer. The clash of cultures still guarantees a lot of fun whenever Sam makes references to the year 2006, which all the other characters obviously don’t know how to react to.

Sounds weird, is weird. But not that weird. Check out this interview with John Simm, which explains the show a bit better, and which also has some funny scenes from the pilot episode:

And it’s really a great show. I enjoyed watching most of it a lot, so much that I watched at least 2 episodes per day. However, after those two exciting seasons, I was a bit disappointed by the finale. The finale didn’t really hit me. It’s a bit “blah”. All through the show, I was expecting something as brilliant as the pilot, with a lot of emotion underneath. Instead the finale was a little convoluted and it was not really what I expected it to be from having watched the show.

So what it a good show with a bad finale? Still a good show? I could compare this to Doctor Who, a show where some of the finales were nowhere near as good as some of it’s mid-season standalone episodes, but that show still always had something else to keep it exciting. Thus, it’s not really comparable to a show like Life on Mars. I’m in a bit of a dilemma, not knowing what to think of the show as a whole.

After that disappointment and the ongoing almost-drag that is Veronica Mars, I’m wondering if there’ll ever be another show that’ll have me as enthralled as the Whoniverse, the Buffyverse, Six Feet Under or Dexter have in the past. Maybe Twin Peaks, The Tudors, Rome, Queer as Folk or Californication will get me out of this hole some day. Until then, I’ll probably read more books.