September 30th, 2008 posted by Bender Rodríguez
What were they thinking, setting the series in Los Angeles?
If you watched the first two seasons of the BCC's Life on Mars, and then watched the pilot episode of ABC's version of it, you would have noticed a slight difference between the two, aside from the disparate locals: the American version pales in comparison to the original. The acting stinks, the special effects that attempt to show you a Los Angeles from 1973 are laughable, and the points where the script deviates from the original are stilted and sophomoric. According to WikiPedia, "ABC ordered the series be overhauled with a new format. As a result, there have been significant changes in cast and crew, and production has been relocated to New York to allow producers to take advantage of recently enacted local and state tax credits for shows filmed in that state." They should have set the series in New York itself, or some city akin to Manchester, England, like Chicago or Seattle.
Morons. Perhaps the new Season 1, Episode 1 will recover with the help of new heavy weight cast members like Michael Imperioli as Detective Ray Carling, Harvey Keitel as Lieutenant Gene Hunt, and Lisa Bonet as Maya Daniels, but I am not all that compelled to follow the series. The original has so much more to offer, not the least of which is the Manchurian atmosphere that permeates each episode and breathes life into the characters.
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