THE STRANGE EXHILARATION:

US critics savour first taste of Life on Mars: Britain's latest TV export is a hit, despite Gene Hunt's 'over-ripe' one-liners (Helen Pidd, 10/11/08, The Guardian)

It is always a gamble transposing a hit British TV show to an American setting. Basil Fawlty did not survive the flight across the Atlantic despite three attempts to remake Fawlty Towers, though the US version of the Office continues to be a enormous success, even without Ricky Gervais in the David Brent role.

The latest character to be given an American accent is Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt, the bluff Mancunian chauvinist who was taken to the nation's hearts in the BBC's tremendously popular police series Life On Mars, which has just been remade for America. The pilot episode had its debut on the ABC network on Thursday night in a prime-time slot, and was largely well-received. The New York Times described it as "strange and exhilarating ... the show's back-to-the-future feel ... lifts it above the ordinary and adds Scorsesian pizazz".

The Boston Globe said: "They've pulled together a vivid cast and evoked the ideal tone - not comedy, not psychodrama, not sci-fi, but an intriguingly evasive blend of them all." USA Today's critic went further, declaring it "one of the best new hours of TV this fall".

Grasping that Gene, not Sam, is the hero is the key to the show.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2008 8:41 AM