Life on Mars, or
How the Breaking of Genre Rules Revitalises the Crime Fiction Tradition
by Christine Downey, Lancaster University

The producer and director of Life on Mars state that one of their aims when making this TV programme was to both draw on and challenge the idea of nostalgia, because they believe that it is often simply assumed that things were better in the past and they wanted to question that assumption.1 This essay examines how far this aim was achieved and assesses how the result breaks conventional genre rules, creating a unique site that critiques both the past and the present; modifies the form and meaning traditionally associated with crime fiction; generates symbolic force; and provides less conventional representations of authority figures, thereby revitalizing the genre.

The writers of Life on Mars explain how Kudos Productions sent them to Blackpool for a weekend, with a ‘bag of money’, and told them to have a good time and come back with at least five ideas for a long running television series. Matthew Graham (co-creator, writer and executive producer) recalls how they knew that what all TV companies want is a police drama, but nevertheless they did not want to write one. Instead talk turned to the police shows that they had all liked and enjoyed, and The Sweeney came out top. They discussed how they could remake The Sweeney while making it thoroughly original in the process, and came to the conclusion that time travel seemed like the answer.2 The result was Life on Mars, which is described by Sam Wollaston in a review for The Guardian as being

the one where Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler gets run over while hunting down a killer, then wakes up in 1973. He’s still a copper, in Manchester, hunting down the same killer as it happens. But his shirt collar’s a lot bigger, he’s got a long leather jacket on, brown flares and ankle boots – he looks pretty good actually. It’s The Bill x Doctor Who = The Sweeney, if you’re looking for a mathematical equation to sum it up.3

 

This remark demonstrates his audience’s appreciation and understanding of the ‘formulaic’ basis of genre. Paul Cobley suggests that any genre is based on a ‘formula’ comprising of a recognisable pattern of discourse and conventions, that gives each genre its basic character and provides a shorthand classification of texts for consumers, who are able to determine what to expect from a genre based on their previous experience of texts.4

However, Cobley argues that generic texts are not necessarily just stale repetitions of old formulae. He points out that it is now widely held that the ‘content’ of texts is crucially important in the understanding of genre, a view which is due to the work into the responses of readers and audiences. This work demonstrates that even where there is an ‘implied reader’ the real reader can choose to read texts differently, and this ‘different’ reading or construction of meaning will derive from determinants outside the text, including aspects of people’s lives. Many genre theorists now hold that generic meaning is derived partly from competence in reading other narratives in the genre, and also from a more diffuse set of knowledges brought to the reading of a specific narrative, and that all texts carry a multiple of meanings and are open to interpretation. In light of this more sophisticated view of ‘genre’ Vladimir Propp’s suggestion that some texts have not so much a formula as a ‘structure’ that can be repeated time and again with different contents, while generally carrying the same meaning, can be a useful model when considering specific genres.5

Using this model we can view Life on Mars as using the typical ‘structure’ of a police procedural to generally carry much the same meaning as other texts in that genre, while incorporating content derived from a myriad of other sources in the process, and thereby avoiding being merely the stale repetition of an old formula. This proposition is born out by the sophisticated and diverse play of allusions within the programme, which plunders many other TV programmes, films, genres and style influences. For example, Jane Featherstone the executive producer has talked about how ‘the show is very much influenced by TV of the 70s ’ particularly The Sweeney and Starskey and Hutch, and also how they took style inspirations from iconic 1970s movies, like Get Carter and All The President’s Men.6 On the commentary to episode two of the first series Matthew Graham refers to a scene in which the character Gene Hunt is making sexist remarks to a female witness as a ‘Carry On’ moment. Bharat Nalluri (director of episodes one and two of series one) has likened the show to a classic western, in which a stranger comes to town and upsets the balance of power.7 He explains how this helps viewers to understand one of the main character’s motivations:

There are lots of references to deputies and sheriffs in the show because that’s how you justify the morality. That’s how Gene justifies the morality of his department. The banging heads, the shouting at people and the threatening people. It’s that he’s like a sheriff in a frontier town in the old west. All that stands between us and the baddies. And the analogy works I think in getting us to understand Gene and not feeling that he’s a thug or just corrupt or just a brutal copper, that actually he’s some kind of lone gunman, you know a sheriff, with just a different set of moral rules.’8

Gill Branston suggests that media genres can be thought of rather like maps, working in much the same way that different kinds of map emphasise different features of a landscape, cityscape or road network in order to be useful.9 She argues that  ‘popular genres can be seen as revealing underlying preoccupations and conflicts in a social order. Studying genre may reveal how the media offer mythical solutions to these preoccupations.’10 She maintains that the boundaries of classification established by a particular culture, religion or society, are routinely transgressed and that this transgression can involve a creative act. This is because it goes beyond the limit of the established classification boundaries and allows for the negative aspects of lived experience to be acknowledged and even affirmed. In her view genre rule breaking can be used as a creative tool for generating irony and laughter, surprise and contemplation.11
The main underlying preoccupations and conflicts in the social order that are revealed in Life on Mars concern the huge advances in science and technology in the police force in the last thirty years, and whether or not these have been gained at the expense of more ‘humane’ attributes. Sam Tyler, who is from 2006, is horrified at the casual sexism, racism and brutality of police officers in 1973. They in turn are unimpressed with Sam’s insistence on the importance of evidence and scientific methodology in investigations. They view him as being held back by endless procedure and as being afraid to trust his own instincts. The producer, Claire Parker, says that there is a conflict at the heart of every story in Life on Mars, that they always started from the point of view that Sam is a man from the present day who believes that his way of policing and his attitudes are the right ones, but who is thrown back to a time when all of those attitudes and beliefs are challenged. She explains that what they looked for in terms of stories were the moral and emotional dilemmas for Sam as a result of being thrown back into 1973.12 Bharat Nalluri describes Sam as ‘a man with a heart but he’s lost it’ and says that ‘he’s forgotten kind of how to live in the jungle, how to be one with his environment, he’s become more CSI, he’s become more head over heart’.13 While John Harris, writing for The Guardian, states that

In John Simm’s portrayal of DI Sam Tyler, there’s all manner of disquiet about the way his male colleagues carry on, focused in particular on DCI Gene Hunt – the thunderingly aggressive, completely unreconstructed Manchester cop who is Tyler’s boss and regular nemesis. Tyler looks askance at Hunt’s approach to everything from alcohol to the ethics of police work – and is regularly outraged by the treatment of WPC Annie Cartright, whose pre-feminist complicity in the force’s bum-pinching culture causes him unease. But he also retains a sneaking admiration for a man so fascinatingly short on modern manners.14

In episode one there are mirror image scenes of the interviewing of a suspect, the first takes place in 2006, the second in 1973. In the first depiction the interview is taped, and a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker accompany the suspect. The scene from 1973 is bare in comparison, as the suspect is alone and there is no independent record of the proceedings. This makes the viewer aware of the suspects’ vulnerability and draws attention to the present day emphasis on procedure and technology. However, present day methods may be perceived as a hindrance and a ‘negative aspect’ of lived experience, indeed the commentary to episode one refers to modern policing as being ‘hamstrung’ by these extra elements. By transgressing the usual boundaries associated with ‘police procedural’ and ‘time travel’, and allowing us to compare 1973 and present day methods, Life on Mars creates a site where this potentially negative aspect of lived experience is articulated and opened up to debate. In this way, the genre rule breaking becomes a creative tool.

Lee Horsley argues that breaking the genre rules of the hard-boiled detective novel led to a revitalizing of the crime fiction tradition, as black and female writers dissociated themselves from ‘a clichéd image of macho individualism’ and undermined the sense that what detective novels offer readers is a confirmation of the status quo:

The revitalizing of the tradition can also, however, be attributed to revisions of the formula accomplished by white male writers, many of whom have taken class, gender, or race as central themes . . . They have also created as their protagonists investigative figures far removed from the stereotypical hard-boiled private eye – figures so lost, floundering, marginalizes, guilt-ridden, alcoholic, or just generally defective that no one could mistake them for masculine role models. 15

Life on Mars offers us a further revision of the formula by bringing together ‘a clichéd image of macho individualism’ in Gene Hunt, and his antitheses Sam Tyler, a truly lost and floundering figure who tries desperately to get his bearings in the strange world of 1973. They begin by being in constant conflict as they face an array of culture clashes, but slowly realise that as they each bring different attributes to each case they actually combine to make an excellent team. At this point the characters begin to develop a grudging respects for each other, demonstrating how the media offer ‘mythical solutions’ to troubling preoccupations. They are revealed to be ‘two sides of the same coin, the head and the heart’. Claire Parker adds that

over the course of the series despite their incredible differences in attitude the tension between the two characters and the two actors on screen makes for a fantastic buddy partnership, a classic buddy partnership, which is very engaging and very, very funny.16

Horsley maintains that crime fiction is neither inherently conservative nor radical, but is a form that can be co-opted for a variety of purposes.17 She explains how the police procedural can establish the outsider’s perspective on contemporary society and can use both the transgressors and the investigator as commentators on the injustices of class, society and the system. She sees this sub-genre as serving to

modify the form and meaning traditionally associated with hard-boiled investigative fiction: they mix the investigative format with other elements, shift the balance between criminal and detective, aim for less conventional representations of colour and gender, and focus the reader’s attention through an investigative figure who is the antithesis of the confidently ‘right’ male authority.18

Each episode of Life on Mars revolves around a crime and an investigation, but equal importance is given to both the conflict and the growing relationship between Sam and Gene, and also to Sam’s dilemma as he is thrown back thirty years and finds this hard to cope with. Episode one, for instance, does not end with the solving of the crime, there are a further ten minutes of action that deal with Sam’s fright and despair as he struggles to make sense of what is happening to him, and in later episodes whenever Sam is in serious trouble or real danger he immediately turns to Gene for help and support. By mixing the investigative format with science fiction, adding some of the properties of a buddy movie and throwing in a dose of comedy for good measure, Life on Mars manages to shift the balance between past and present and establish outsiders perspectives on both contemporary society and that of 1973. It also allows for an exploration of the corruption and misconduct of establishment figures and the injustices of the system they serve. 

Horsley argues that in the move from classic to hard-boiled detective fiction the emphasis on milieu was crucial. That this created a  ‘world gone wrong’ perspective of the private eye that has an affinity with the strange, disorderly and crowded scenes that are characteristic of satire, and that when the ‘protective presence of the private eye is withdrawn the discordance of the scene itself dominates the text.’19 In her view there is a strong pull towards the symbolic mode even at the most ‘realistic’ end of the satiric spectrum. She explains how ‘the symbolic force of a crime novel can be generated by incorporating the details of a particular milieu into surreal descriptions of threatening and oppressive forms of entrapment, or by building out of them what is cumulatively a hellish landscape in which brutality, destruction, and violence prevail.’20 Series one and two produce sixteen hours of television, in which the character of Sam Tyler appears in virtually every shot21 and events are seen entirely through his eyes, producing a ‘world gone wrong’ perspective described by one critic as ‘the concussed cop became like a camera, through which we saw just how much has changed in 33 years.’22  Brian Cathcart writing for the New Statesman notes that the ‘past in general may be a foreign country, but – as the BBC’s daft but wonderful cop series Life on Mars proves beyond a doubt – 1973 is a different planet altogether.’23

Throughout the series Sam is referred to as having been transferred from C division in ‘Hyde’. The references to Hyde take on mythical status in the series, not only as references to the mysterious future from which Sam has been displaced, but also by playing on the audience’s connections to the game of hide and seek, and to Jekyll and Hyde. By transforming the details of a milieu that is 1973 into a surreal, threatening and oppressive form of entrapment for Sam, then emphasising the discordance thus created by viewing events entirely from his point of view, Life on Mars incorporates symbolic force into a police procedural.

The myriad of other sources that Life on Mars deliberately and self-consciously plunders leaves it open to accusations of being just another example of ‘the random cannibalisation of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusions’ that Fredric Jameson regards as being an essential part of the postmodern nostalgia film.24 Postmodernism is a disputed term that is most often applied to a cultural condition prevailing in the advanced capitalist societies since the 1960s, characterized by a superabundance of disconnected images and styles. In this sense postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.25 Life on Mars indulges in a ‘superabundance’ of images and styles, but the result is not devoid of coherence and meaning. James Walton comments that ‘theoretically, this should add up to a right old mess’, but that in practice ‘the contrast between police work then and now proved to be fascinating’.26

Jameson particularly links postmodernism with pastiche, or what he terms the ‘complacent play of historical allusion.’27 He argues that pastiche is often confused with parody, but that although they both involve imitation and mimicry, parody has an ulterior motive, which is to mock or ridicule a divergence from convention or a norm, and that this function is missing in pastiche. However, it was Andre Bazin who pointed out that the ‘tradition of genres is a base of operations for creative freedom,’28 and is an enriching, not a constricting tradition. Filmmakers are attracted to genres because they automatically synthesize a vast amount of cultural information, which then frees them to explore more personal concerns. For Giannetti the stylised conventions and archetypal story patterns of genres encourage viewers to participate ritualistically in the basic beliefs, fears and anxieties of their age. And genres might be regarded as contemporary myths, which lend philosophical meaning to the facts of everyday life.29 He writes that ‘[m]yths embody the common ideals and aspirations of a civilization, and by returning to these communal tales the artist becomes, in a sense, a psychic explorer, bridging the chasm between the known and the unknown.’30

By constructing a world that combines the past and the present Life on Mars creates a sense of time and space that is quasi-mythic. While Jameson has argued that this is typical of the dehistoricising effects of post-modern culture, which uses pastiche to produce ‘depthless’ work, the textual incorporation in Life on Mars can be viewed as a means of bridging the chasm between the past and the present that cannot be adequately understood as ‘blank parody’. It serves a specific function, namely to promote understanding by providing a kind of storytelling shorthand, something that allows the story to be decoded quickly. It is parody that has retained its sense of humour, making Life on Mars ‘retro without being pastiche’ as maintained by the director.

James Ellroy maintains that crime fiction is the ‘perfect vehicle’ for social and political criticism.31 By mixing the police procedural with time travel Life on Mars goes a step further and creates a unique opportunity to critique both the past and the present. It looks back from the present ‘politically correct’ and technologically advanced day and marvels at the primitiveness and lack of sophistication in both attitudes and methods in 1973, while at the same time critiquing the attitudes and methods of the year 2006 from the perspective of a more innocent age. It asks a series of searching questions: has the police force become too mechanical? Is there now too much reliance on ballistics, forensic technologies, electronic databases, and surveillance methods at the expense of more human attributes and skills? Are the police force and society at large loosing something important, and possibly irreplaceable, as mechanical and technological advances are relentlessly pursued?

In the process Life on Mars modifies the form and meaning traditionally associated with investigative fiction in general and the police procedural in particular, as it mixes the investigative format with science fiction, satire and comedy, while shifting the balance between a clichéd image of macho individualism and ‘new age’ man. It generates symbolic force via a ‘world gone wrong’ perspective created through the use of a familiar, and yet unfamiliar, milieu that is 1973. It follows in the footsteps of earlier literary works in the genre that broke conventions and provided less conventional representations of authority figures, by focusing the viewers’ attention through an investigative figure who is the antithesis of the confidently ‘right’ male authority. In so doing Life on Mars produces a vivid and enjoyable revitalization of the crime fiction tradition.

 

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NOTES: