TV Is Back: Pushing Daisies & Life on Mars

There's actually a good new show this season! And another, probably even better show that was already here but you're not watching!

First off, you should be watching Pushing Daisies. But you're not. The show's ratings have dipped lower than Knight Rider's, and that's a problem, considering Knight Rider is pulling down a 2.2. In previous years (or maybe just on Fox), that's been enough for instantaneous cancellation. Sure, its quirks have quirks, which is usually death on network TV. But it's just so whip smart. There isn't a single throwaway moment. It has genuine emotion beneath the cutesy/Tim Burton sheen. It's laugh-out-loud funny, all the time. And it's the only show on TV where they'll do a scene where they pull a clown car out of a lake, and have the characters watch as they pull the dead bodies of clown after clown after clown out... One of the show's nicer touches is the omniscient narrator, who uses a tone like he's reading a Dr. Suess book to describe the murder mysteries. It's like eating incredibly well-written birthday cake every wednesday, and there's never been anything really very remotely like it.

Earlier tonight, ABC debuted its new series, Life on Mars. It's named for the Bowie song, which puts in an appearance in the pilot. It's a remake of a BBC series, which I've never seen. There's a couple reasons normal US channels don't just show foreign series when they bring them over, other than that they're stupid. One, they're shot using different technology. British series look fundamentally different, technology that reminds Americans of low-rent home video, though that's mostly because of the conversion. Also, British TV works on a different business model. The original Life on Mars series is already over. I'd be surprised if they had much more than 20 episodes total. When networks in the US score a hit, they expect it to run for a hundred-some episodes. I'm not sure why those models evolved differently, but it's certainly the case.

The show itself? If you haven't been living in a commercial-free cave, you already know it's about a detective (a decent Jason O'Mara) who gets hit by a car in 2008 and wakes up in 1973, where's he's still a detective somehow, and Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, and Gretchen Mol are working in the precinct. So the cast is very good (though his 2008 girlfriend Lisa Bonet is unbelievably horrible... fortunately she's not on-screen much). I was extremely surprised that they're basically not leaving any mystery at all... they're basically saying he's in a hospital, unconscious and making all this up. Maybe others will have a different reading, but it felt like it was pretty unambiguous. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

In the meantime, though, we have a show with a handful of interesting characters and some interesting things to say. Yes, we have big collars and big hair, but this isn't quite a 1973 we've seen before. It's not just the little things; this show gets how our very philosophy has changed in fundamental ways, and it explores that without smacking us in the face with it. And it has a scene where the hero seriously considers shooting a little kid, and we still like him afterwards. It has many flaws, don't get me wrong. O'Mara's cop acts way too crazy for this crowd to react with the relative apathy that they do. It's credulity-straining. I also have trouble buying Keitel's supervisor guy, but maybe that's because I've spent my entire life long after 1973.

Incidentally, Life on Mars is the first show I've seen to use the World Trade Center in the way that they do here. It threw me, but not in a bad way. We've had the WTC airbrushed out of films for a while now. It's nice to see it actually highlighted without some obvious heavy symbolism (a la the last shot of Munich). Anyway, it's worth watching, especially compared to some of, say, NBC's new slate.

p.s. It's not just Knight Rider... I saw the last scene of the Kath & Kim premiere tonight, and the sheer tone deafness of the writing was startling. I try not to judge the whole by parts, but I have trouble believing there's anything worthwhile there. And does anyone think Crusoe looks palatable. Somebody needs to come back from one of the 17 different apocalyptic alternate futures on Heroes and prevent these abominations from ever being born.