It's hard for fans of the original "Life On Mars" to see anyone in the role of Sam Tyler than the great John Simm, but the ABC run of the show that premieres Thursday night will only spend a single episode on the same track as the original.
After that, the American version of the show will take a life of its own.
"I think once you see the episodes roll out, the pilot is definitely the one episode that we had to stick close to the story of the BBC version because it sets up the story," said Jason O'Mara, the new Sam Tyler in the ABC series. "But once episodes 2, 3 and 4 come along, even though there are elements there form the original, it starts to go in a different direction."
"Life on Mars" focuses on Sam Tyler, a cop from 2008 who suddenly finds himself stuck in 1973. He can't figure out what he's doing there, or how he got there, but he takes on the role of a cop there, and is constantly trying to get back in touch with his own time.
The new "Life On Mars" had struggles right out of the gate. David E. Kelley, who brought fans the like of "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Public," left the show after the pilot as part of his agreement to give one more year to his critically acclaimed "Boston Legal" series. ABC then gutted the cast of the pilot, which included "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" alum Colm Meaney, and replaced all the actors with bigger names to surround O'Mara like Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli from "The Sopranos" fame.
While that might cause one to question a network's commitment to a particular show, executive producer Josh Appelbaum says that's not the case with "Life on Mars."
"Thanks to the support of our two studios, which is Twentieth Century Fox Television and ABC Studios, we have a really generous budget," Appelbaum said. "They're really behind the show. The network is behind the show. I think you'll find that we have not really scrimped on anything."
The show might be American, but its star O'Mara is not. A native of Dublin, Ireland, O'Mara had to pick up a New York accent rather quickly, since he would be a cop on the streets of 1973 New York.
Doing a New York accent quickly conjures memories of gangsters or the like, but O'Mara wanted his accent to be far more real.
"I work with a dialect coach every day," he said. "And what's really challenging about it is that we didn't want to just do a sort of stereotypical New York accent where everybody's talking like that, and when it sounds like that gangstery or even too sort of cop-like, you know? We wanted to just give it a subtle flavor. So that was really the challenge and it's harder to do a subtle accent of any region than it is to do an immediately recognizable, you know, Italian New York accent or a Jewish New York accent, or an Irish New York accent.
"So I've tried to sort of blend a few things together and just give it a flavor, and I've been happy with the work we've been doing so far. But it definitely adds another dimension of complication to the process when the script comes through. I just can't worry about my lines. I have to worry about also how I pronounce the words."
"Life on Mars" premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
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Michael Hinman is the founder and site coordinator for Airlock Alpha and the entire BlipNetwork. He owns Quantum Global Media Inc., the parent corporation of the BlipNetwork. He's a print journalist by day, and lives in Tampa, Fla.
