Life On Mars

I've discovered that BBC America is running a marathon of Life On Mars today, no doubt in the run-up to the premiere of the American version of the show on ABC later this week. What's interesting, is the BBC America is running it with occasional subtitles. Let's think about that for a minute. A show, shot in English with English subtitles. I understand that there are some parts of the UK where the accent is thick enough that it might be difficult for an American audience to understand, but there aren't any real problem accents on this show. Even more ridiculous, I think I notice one of the subtitles that didn't exactly match what was said.

As to the American version, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it. It's a show with a strange basic concept (a cop in the present gets hit by a car and falls into a coma, and wakes up in 1973), so I wonder if it'll be able to find an audience on American TV. Especially with such an obscure title (it's from a Bowie song). The other question is how long an American show allow the ambiguity of the situation (is he crazy, in a coma, or is it really happening). The BBC show had the advantage of only shooting, I think, 16 episodes. The American version is going to have to outpace that in one season, so it'll be interesting to see how they stretch out the story.