Life On American Mars!
It’s looking like the US remake of the genius UK series Life On Mars is being picked up by the US ABC network. David E Kelley (Boston Legal, Ally McBeal) looks to be the show runner. Interesting for a US remake, they’ve picked 2 irishmen to play the leads.. Having said that, they did offer the roles to Phil Glenister and John Simm to reprise, but they turned it down due to family, and fear of becoming “a nutter in The Priory if i’d gone to Hollywod” as Phil put it!
The setting is switched from 1973 Manchester UK, to 1972 Los Angeles. Sam Tyler, Gene Hunt and Annie Cartwright are all there, it doesn’t look like Ray or Chris’s characters make the transition though. The pilot appears to stick pretty faithfully to the plot of the UK show from what we can see. I’d expect that to vary more as the season progresses though.
Colm Meaney as has been cast as Gene Hunt – To scifi fans, Colm is best know as Miles O’Brien from Star Trek:TNG and DS9, and more recently Cowen, leader of the Genii in Stargate : Atlantis. His film work also includes Con Air, Layer Cake, and The Commitments.
I really feel Colm’s a very good fit for the US portrail of the ‘Gene Genie’. Gene is an Irish American cop, but still has UK Gene’s no-nonsense approch to police work! Colm’s proved over the years how good he is at switching from serious, to rough, to comic, all of which are interweaved aspects of Gene’s character.
Jason O’Mara is playing Sam Tyler. Got to be honest, don’t know this guys work at all…
You can see some of the all in action in the trailer below after the jump…
Hummm… I’m really unsure… For me it’s lost the coolness and quirkiness that made it so great in the original. It has been undeniably transformed into a US show though, which I suppose was the point… I would like to see the whole episode before making a proper judgement…
[...] The Manchester-set BBC hit series ‘Life on Mars’ has been remade by American channel ABC (why, oh God why?) with some very shaky test reviews already putting the project in doubt. The series is set to debut on October 9 at 10pm, preceded by the strong lead-in of medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a likely trick, putting an established show like GA ahead of a new show to ensure at least a few curious viewers who don’t switch off. ABC have insisted on “retconning” the series; that is, re-writing the mythology of the series and the backstory of the characters, instead of relying on the original story to speak for itself. Other popular examples of retconning are, for example, in the recent Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight films – which make no reference to the Batman films of the early and mid 90s, which themselves ended in the nonsense day-glo Batman & Robin (1997), starring a badly miscast George Clooney. The attempt to remake yet another UK hit show by American executives desperate for success resets Sam Tyler (here played by jobbing Irish actor Jason O’Mara) in 1973 New York, where issues such as the Vietnam war, Nixon’s Watergate, the civil rights women’s liberation movements are all tackled. The show stars Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction) in the Gene Hunt role, popularised over here by the inimitable Philip Glenister. The other supporting characters like Ray and Annie are played by Michael Imperioli (Sopranos) and Gretchen Mol (3:10 to Yuma). Audience figures for Life on Mars in the UK debuted at 6.8 million viewers in 2006, around 28% of the total audience share. Related LinksTo see a trailer for the American Life on Mars click here [...]
[...] The new cast photos for the recast US remake of Life on Mars have been released. It does to me look somewhat more convincing than the old US cast. [...]