US Life on Mars a failure before it begins

Ineptly chosen locations, wooden acting ... Watching the pilot episode, you wonder what can be done to save Life on Mars US

"Just how bad does a pilot have to be to get itself moved to the other side of the country?" That’s the question everyone has been asking about the American Life on Mars remake, which was set in LA but is now relocating to New York. With the offending original pilot leaking onto the net we can now provide a definitive answer: pretty damn bad. Sam Tyler is played by Irish actor Jason O’Mara, an identikit beefcake of no notable ability, and O’Mara’s countryman Colm Meaney plays Gene Hunt - a bold piece of casting which the show fails to capitalise on. It seems unlikely this version of the show will air. Meaney must wonder what he’s got himself into.

Like in the British original, a near-fatal car accident later lands Sam in the past (1972 in the US: a year earlier than the British Sam). Smokin’ Joe Frazier is heavyweight world champion, Nixon is in the White House and Foghat terrorise the album charts. O’Mara’s responses to his timeslip are as cliched as his blandly rugged mug. He shouts, he barges, his eyes pop. It’s all quite tiresome.

Meanwhile, back in the supporting cast, Rachelle Lefevre plays Detective Annie Cartwright, a 70s redhead who doesn’t look very 70s - Wardrobe must have taken the week off. Liz White’s plain but plucky WPC felt a good deal more authentic than this swimwear model with a police badge who appears to have wandered into the building by mistake. There’s a flatlining sexual chemistry between the Sam and her that would cause much eye-rolling in the future should this project continue. Just like in the original, Sam wins over his sceptical colleagues with his future knowledge of forensic pathology but they still seem as bored by him as the rest of us.

So what should they do with the remake of the remake? Like Sam, it’s in critical condition with few vital signs but the whole point of a pilot is to see how it flies then make the appropriate changes. The Bionic Woman, for instance, had an annoying deaf sister who was replaced in the series premiere by an equally annoying hearing unimpaired sister. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a Willow who was totally unable to act before Alyson Hannigan saved the day. While it may be hopeless in this case, we can at least try.

Firstly, Jason O’Mara has to go. Although reports suggest his position is safe, he has neither the range nor charisma of John Simm and just plain looks wrong. His face and physicality jar with everything we need to believe about Sam Tyler. A character tells him "you don’t look like a cop - you have a soft face", but that is exactly what he lacks - any sensitivity, ambivalence or nuance. Ideally, for a conflicted cop with a double life, you’d want to transplant Johnny Depp’s performance in Donnie Brasco into the role but, failing that, any non-conventionally attractive actor with the ability to convey emotion without gurning would be an improvement. The New York setting is irrelevant. Locations don’t make a drama work: character and story do.

Perhaps worst of all, Gene Hunt is criminally underwritten. No scene stealing moments or funny one-liners, despite the entire department falling around laughing at his every attempt at humour. He feels like an afterthought. He needs to be rewritten with the understanding that he, not Sam, is the most important character in the show and that it lives or dies on his success. It is remarkable that the producers don’t seem to have grasped this.

But maybe it doesn’t matter to them. Saleable stories are a dime a dozen in Hollywood and if this one doesn’t work out every producer has a sackful more waiting to try out. But whether they recognize it or not, Life on Mars was a special show whose viewers connected with it more than they would with your run-of-the-mill formulaic time-travel drama. To buy into this franchise without understanding that seems a big waste of everyone’s time. And if the New York remake is anything like the LA pilot, time is the one thing this show doesn’t have.