I previously wrote about the challenges of drawn-out sequential narrative. A TV series is a classic example, but there are plenty of other examples of authors telling a big story over a sprawling landscape (e.g., the Harry Potter books, any number of comic books, etc.)
Old school television is self-contained. Each week, a story is told; it begins and ends in 60 minutes. When you tune in next week, you won’t have had to see the previous episode to know what’s going on.
In more recent times, we’ve had series that tried to tell one complete story over the course of many episodes that play out over years. Great examples include The Sopranos, The Wire and Lost. We’ve also had shows that tried to tell a story in one season; 24 is the successful example, but one can also cite Murder One & Damages, as well as unsuccessful attempts like The Nine and Day Break.
All of this is long prelude to a discussion of the recently-concluded Life on Mars, the American remake of the British series. (This will be a spoiler-filled discussion, so beware.)
I was going to write something long before this, comparing the British and American versions, but the ending has made many of my comments null-and-void. The BBC version was more political. It explored real events from the Seventies. Its modern protagonist struggled against the violence, corruption and political incorrectness of an earlier time. The ABC version didn’t bother, because it turned out none of that stuff was really happening and our hero was not from 2008, but from 2035.
The problem is that by going a hardcore science fiction route, the American Life on Mars removed a lot of the emotional stakes. Whatever happened in 1973 didn’t matter. It wasn’t really happening. In contrast, I recall a story by Phillip K. Dick called “I Think I Shall Be Home Soon.” It’s a similar set-up: An astronaut is in suspended animation on a long flight. Unfortunately, his mind wakes up and the ship’s computer has to try to engage him mentally through virtual situations, since he would otherwise go insane. But every scenario that the computer concocts, the astronaut destroys because of his emotional problems. By the time that he really does arrive at his destination, he refuses to see that he’s now awake. He insists that he’s still on the ship, imagining everything. Now, there’s a scenario where the ability to immerse yourself in the fantasy can save your life.
I loved the British Life on Mars, but the one thing that didn’t work was the mythology, the answer to its mysteries. Was Sam Tyler in a coma in the future, dreaming the past? Did he really go physically back to 1973? Was he a denizen of ’73 imagining that he was a time-traveler? What was real, what was fake?
But the problem is that the show never really seemed to settle on an answer. Maybe the serial killer that Tyler was chasing in the future had done this to him. But that was dropped. Maybe Tyler was in a coma, but had travelled back in time to work out problems with his father. That went nowhere. Maybe he was imagining it all and the mysterious phone calls he got were attempts by his doctors to lure him out of the coma. Or was that actually a trick to get him to betray his fellow detectives of ’73? None of it went anywhere. In the end, he jumped back to the future, with no sense of whether he’d really been back to the past or any sense of why any of it happened. Then he commits suicide in an attempt to get back to that earlier time and the relationships he’d formed there.
(Both shows started with missing girlfriends in the future/present that were in danger and both shows abandoned them in short order.)
But even though it was frustrating than none of it added up, it was ultimately a little more satisfying that the concrete answers of the American version. One theme of the original show (a theme that was barely touched on in the remake) was that Tyler had to face the same questions we all do: What is the nature of reality? Is there a God and we will be judged for our actions in this world? Is there no afterlife and life has no higher meaning? Are we brains in a jar, imagining all we do? Is The Matrix real? Do you believe the Pope or the Dali Lama?
Because if you’re a conscious person, you struggle with these questions, assuming that knowing what’s real and what really matters should impact your actions. But if you’re Sam Tyler, you’re not sure which is the destructive path: accepting that you’re in 1973 and refusing to get back to your old life or fighting the fact you’re in 1973 and insisting you’re in a coma.
But I will give props to the new Life on Mars for one thing. Even though they pulled a Twilight Zone twist out at the very end, you can’t say they didn’t play fair. From the title of the show onward, they laid out where they were going. Sam’s hallucinations, the weird phone calls, the alien spaceships, the nickname “Spaceman,” the Bowie references, and so on – they all made sense once you knew that Sam Tyler was an astronaut lying in suspended animation.
Points for the bravado, since it made the whole season feel a little like a shaggy dog story. But, courage of convictions, I guess…
(By the way, the cast was quite good and, in particular, Gretchen Mol was terrific – one distinct improvement over the British version in terms of how it handled the lone female officer. There was an arc to her character, even if it turned out to be a figment of Sam’s imagination.)
Tags: Life on Mars
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The Pop View » The Pacing of a Sequential Narrative Says:
[...] In a couple of previous posts, I have mused about the challenges of telling a huge, sprawling story. And doing sequential narrative on television is even more challenging. (See How to tell a big story on TV. and Watching Life on Mars.) [...]