John and I watched the sublime Life on Mars with John Simm and Philip Glenister on BBC America. We loved every trippy, twisty, hilarious, edgy minute of it.
So, of course, us Yanks had to copy it. Badly. It’s a shame, because it has Jason O’Mara in the Simm role, and he was fantastic in The Closer . But the writing is clunky, Harvey Keitel seems to be phoning in the Glenister part on a sketchy transatlantic connection, and the visuals are so frighteningly similar to the original (down to the costumes and some of the actors) that aside from the accents, it’s hard to know why they even bothered re-making it, aside from US networks’ obvious penchant for ripping off good ideas from the UK.
I’m so sorry, England.