And so they cancelled Life on Mars.
True story.
I can’t say that I’m going to mourn it. It’s a show that I didn’t really miss during its winter hiatus and I am not going to try to catch up on as I endure my month-long vacation from DVR. But at the same time, when you think of the fact that every other drama on TV is a procedural about a detective trying to recreate the way a heiress was murdered with her own shoes, it’s nice to know that there were some shows trying to play with the format. Even if it was another police drama.
And it was a well-acted one at that (Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol, Michael Imperioli). Even if Jason O’Mara had an uphill climb when it came to reacting to his absurd predicament (being thrown into 1970s New York after being hit by a car).
There were two primary reasons I persisted in watching Life On Mars. The first was O’Mara who, of course, was a good actor, but was also incredibly hot in that late-thirties age bracket I tend to go for. Whatever — I like ‘em older. I also liked the fact that Lisa Bonet had a recurring role. For some reason I liked the fact that our erstwhile Denise Huxtable had found lucrative work in prime time. If she and Danica McKellar can find their ways back into the spotlight, there’s hope for us all. You hear that, Mark Linn-Baker?
One nice thing that ABC did for the show, though, is give the writers enough notice to wrap up the series into a tidy package. I suppose this was in an effort to prevent people from going into a frenzy like they did with the unceremonious dumping of Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone.
So, yes. That was nice. Remind me to write them a note.
PS – ABC, don’t you feel silly for all those pilot re-shoots now?