I love the music. I'm not sure what I think about the show yet, but I'm hopeful.

Have they used the same music (Life on Mars)?

Yep. It was playing on his iPod before the accident, and the 8-track after.

abc.com has a "life on mars" radio setup ... you can listen to the period music from each episode. Based on a couple image insertions, it looks like they're going to resolve the first season very similarly to the Brit version.

Because of the dental emergency, I have accidentally seen the final episode of the American version. Most of it was excellent, resolved some things, gave a moment we'd all be waiting for, some tears, and then took a sharp left hand turn into stupid.

I mean really stupid.

In other news ... I was poking around BBC America and found a 'sequel' called Ashes to Ashes, where a different detective gets shot and ends up in 1981 with several of the same incidental characters. There is also a scary clown. I recall the spandex and cocaine 80s with a fair degree of clarity. I do not remember professional women wearing scoop tops that exposed their bra straps quite as often.

i dont get it
whats it got to do with bowie

I liked Ashes.

Remember, Life on Mars wasn't just a period piece interms of recreating the 70s, it was also a pastiche of a 70s style British TV cops show (ie. The Sweeney)

Ashes to ashes, like Life on Mars does the whole 80s thing...but is also a pastiche of 80s tv cop shows. The scoop tops may not have appeared much in rreal life 80s but they did on tv:P

Instead of the blokey conventions of 70s cop shows, this was the 'Brutish male cop and sexy posh bird cop, pushed together as working partners, with a will they won't they storyline.' I think it does it very well. It is just a different set of tv conventions that they are drawing on.

Incidentally, the scene from Ashes where the male cops stamp her arse with the departmental stamp, was taken from real experiencesd of female police officers in the 80s.

Soundtrack.

And Ashes to Ashes has the creepy clown from that video ...