ashes to ashes?

I just watched the last episode of Life on Mars, which is the entertaining series about a policeman who gets bumped back from the 21st century into 1973. The speculation is whether its a result of a traffic accident which has thrown him into a coma and will he recover?

The real life he sees in 1973 is a politically incorrect cop force in Manchester running villains to ground with all the swagger of the old Sweeney series, right down to the use of beige and brown coloured Ford Cortinas. Amongst the street scenes are a few incongruities like closed circuit television, the occasional satellite dish, an overabundance of airconditioners, modern number plates and so forth but that actually adds to the parallel worlds aspects of the series.

There's a clever link to the WIzard of Oz concussion too, with hero Sam being refered to as Dorothy by one of the other characters and then a whole sequence of Over the Rainbow being played in the last episode. What could this mean?

The last episode featured a colliery payroll train robbery and a plot about whether the central character would be able to be brought back to the 21st Century. Suffice to say the coma-based life in the 1970s seemed more real to our hero and there are effectively two endings to the series which have been spliced together. Take your pick, but be careful or the Test Card girl will switch off your television.

I enjoyed the mind games of the series and will wait with interest to see how they flash it forward to the 1980s and maybe send someone else backwards to converge with this set of characters as they roll forward through time - assuming they make the series named after a different David Bowie track.

Of course there is life on Mars.