Just finished watching Life on Mars, not another "we think there might be ice and therefore we'll spend billions trying to find it" (why the fck don't they just go to the north pole, there's lots of it there!) piece of crap television, but a BBC cop show. The basic premise is that a policeman, in 2006, is knocked unconscious in a car accident and wakes up in 1973. Well, look for yourselves: http://www.bbc.co.uk/lifeonmars/

This is a brilliant series, absolutely fantastic. Anyone who remembers The Sweeny would love it.

I am going to start bombarding BBC Prime with emails to get them to show it, although as it doesn't involve cooking or decorating and is less than five years old, I doubt they will.

I've got series one on DVD and as it's so good I'll lend it to anyone who is interested.

Oh, and from now on, you can call me "Guv", ok you slags?

Agreed it is superb, S2 has started in UK, so we may find a bootleg copy of it soon.

BBC Prime.... waste of time, and you got the time wrong. I think a programme has to be at least 10 years and unpopular i.e. the beeb can't distribute it to other countries. On that basis it will never find it's way to Prime.

An American network shot a pilot for their own version, but it didn't get picked up. Nor has, incidentally, the American reworking of Footballer's Wives.

It would be too watered down for US TV. A sample line, said to some kids when the cop parks his car: "if i see any scratches on it when i come back, i'll go to your house and stamp on your toys".

I'm ordering series two this week, can't wait.

That is nowhere near the kind of lines you get to hear on American network shows, let alone cable ones like HBO or Showtime. American television is going through a second Golden Age right now, and the BBC can only hope to be half as good as most shows from across the pond.

You slaaaaaaaaag! Some quotes from the show. I doubt the first two would ever be said on US TV. Gene is the archetypal 70's cop, Sam is the one who has gone back in time.

Gene: You think you know everything, don't you?
Sam Tyler: I know the stench of rotten apples.
Gene: Yeah? And I know your slag is lying through her teeth and do you wanna know why?
Sam Tyler: Yeah, why?
Gene: Steven Warren is a bum bandit. Do you understand? A poof! A fairy! A queer! A queen! Fudge packer! Uphill Gardener! Fruit picking sodomite!
Sam Tyler: He's gay?
Gene: As a bloody Christmas Tree!

Gene: Now. Yesterday's shooting. The dealers are all so scared we're more likely to get Helen Keller to talk. The Paki in a coma's about as lively as Liberace's dick when he's looking at a naked woman, all in all this investigation's going at the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory.
Sam Tyler: [Sam Tyler, aghast, drops the radio he is holding]
Gene: What?
Sam Tyler: Think you might have missed out the Jews
Gene: What?
Sam Tyler: I think we need to explore whether this attempted murder was a hate crime.
Gene: What as opposed to one of those I-really-really-like-you sort of murders?

Gene: [Ordering the hunt for a murderer]
Gene: This is my city. And it will be a safe place for my wife and my mum to walk around in. Is that understood?
Detectives: Yes, guv.
Gene: [Sternly] Right. Find out who the dead woman was, find out who killed her. Do it now.
Gene: [He checks his watch]
Gene: Hold up, hold up. Do it tomorrow morning, first thing.
[Brightly]
Gene: Beer o'clock, gentlemen

Chris Skelton: I wonder what killed him?
Gene: That would be the bloody enormous hole in his chest where the bullet went in!

Annie Cartwright: Boss, there's a viscous yellow liquid in his ear...
Gene: No, that's the drip from my fried egg butty, love. Well done Miss Marple, that's why we need women detectives...

Gene: Blardy, blardy, history bloody blardy. It doesn't take a degree in applied bollocks to know what's going on!
Sam Tyler: Go on then, amaze me with your insubstantial GUESSWORK!

Sam Tyler: Because I loved her!
Gene: You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... French... bender... Man United supporting POOF!

Sam Tyler: I think she's telling the truth.
Gene: I think she's as fake as a tranny's fanny.

Sam Tyler: I still think we need to entertain the possibility that this could be a racial killing...
Gene: Oh, well let's entertain it, let's take it out for a prawn cooktail, a steak and a bottle of Liebfraumilch, then let's kick it into the gutter where it belongs!

Gene: Drugs eh? What's the point. They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren't there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.

Layla: [Interviewing Layla at the station]
Layla: About 8:30, straight after I left Sam's flat, he was still alive.
Gene: Straight after you left Sam's flat?
Sam Tyler: She needed protection.
Gene: Well I hope you used some!

Gene: He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course.

Gene: She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot.

Gene: Listen, you're not the one who's going to have to knit himself a new arse after 25 years of aggressive male affection in prison showers, I'm coming with you!.

Gene: I think you've forgotten who you're talking to.
Sam Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Gene: You make that sound like a bad thing.

Gene: [to Ray Carling whom he had demoted a few months ago]
Gene: Good work, Raymondo. I'm bumping you back up to DS... only this time make it stand for Detective Sergeant and not Dog Shit!

Chris Skelton: Woman in her twenties, dead.
Gene: Well I didn't think she was sunbathing, did I?
Gene: Don't move, you are surrounded by armed bastards!

[Gene and Sam need to get a pub landlord out of the way so that they can go undercover]
Gene: Ray! Go and arrest the landlord of the Trafford Arms
Ray Carling: What for?
Gene: Think of something on the way
[later]
Gene: In a bizarre twist of fate the landlord was arrested this afternoon... on suspicion of Cattle Rustling
Ray Carling: [Ray takes a bow and receives a round of applause]

Sam Tyler: If it was to do with football, he'd have serious injuries.
Gene: He's dead. That's quite serious.

Gene: There will never be a woman prime minister as long as I have a hole in my arse.

Gene: [bursting in on Stephen Warren, who is performing an act of oral sex on another man] I'm not a Catholic me'self Mr Warren, but isn't there something in the Bible about "Thou shalt not suck off rent boys"?
Stephen Warren: How dare you come in here!
Gene: You could have said that to the boy.

want it want it want it