John Simm’s Sam Tyler is way cooler than Jason O’Mara’s ABC version of the character, even if I still think O’Mara is pretty cool. And I greatly enjoyed Series One but I was dying (just kidding, but appropriate) to know what actually happened to Tyler in the BBC version. Just as a warning: I’m talking about both the BBC and ABC versions LIKE YOU’VE ALREADY SEEN THEM! So some of you should stop reading. Really.
Life on Mars is a phenomenal take on what would happen if you were knocked in the head and awoke thirty years earlier. Okay, and you were a detective and trying to figure out why you were back in the past when you wanted to be present in the present/future. But the ABC version ended with your run-of-the-mill “wake up and realize that you were dreaming or in a drug-induced coma because you were rocking a spacesuit” deal. Seriously? That was like the lamest letdown on a season’s worth of edge-of-your-seat television-watching.
But the BBC version (the original, I might add) ends with more than Tyler realizing that he liked living in the coma-induced (but not drug/space-induced) world better than he liked living in what was his previous reality. I guess that’s kind of Matrix-like because of the coming “unplugged,” but somehow, the BBC version spun itself as something completely crazy and original (with the help of David Bowie songs). In the BBC version, we’re treated to a “what just happened?” ending.
Did Tyler commit suicide as he jumped off the roof? Did he return to his real reality and the future was dreamed? Either way, it seems that Tyler cared about his partners-in-crime more in the past than he did about his life in the present/future. Tyler’s sacrificial death saves his friends… wait, Tyler was a Christ-figure? I can’t help thinking that was in the minds of the authors before it ever got out of the gate, and even the ABC version had a few moments where the spiritual broke in. But the truth is that by Tyler’s decision, he saves Gene Hunt, Annie Cartwright, and the rest.
So, again, the BBC got it right.
