From KorbiTV at Zap2it.com

There are few new shows this Fall that I’m thrilled with, so it was quite a relief to find last week’s Life on Mars premiere totally enjoyable. Based on a BBC series of the same name, producers are now saddled with the task of turning a 16-episode event into a long-running series. They seem to be off to a good start with really solid casting — Jason O’Mara, Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, Lisa Bonet, Gretchen Mol — a classic soundtrack and cool wardrobe (diggin’ O’Mara in the 70s-flavor threads and Mol in that charming, vintage police woman get-up). The overall vibe has me wondering what’s to come. E.P. Josh Appelbaum was kind enough to clue KrobiTV at Zap2it.com in…

In last Thursday’s pilot, we met Detective Sam Tyler’s lady, Maya (Bonet), and their romantic bond was established. But it wasn’t long before Sam (O’Mara) was somehow transported to the year 1973, leaving her behind. And in the “past,” he meets a lovely policewoman named Annie (Mol). So, tell me, how long will it take for those two to get it on?
Josh Appelbaum: Well, you’ll see in episode two, there are scenes where it’s clear that she’s definitely his solace in a land of savages, and he continues to be drawn to her. But that will sort of meet with complications, there’s definitely going to be a roadblock keeping them from being together that will be exposed by the end of this week’s episode. Her character, quietly, has a great mystery behind her. There’s stuff about Annie that we’ll be revealing in the first thirteen [hours], both romantically and otherwise. She holds some very big secrets and some very big things in her past. And so, for her and Sam, for a good long while, it’s a friendship. They want to keep it a friendship, because first, he has to figure out what the hell he’s doing in 1973. And then the more he settles in and realizes [this situation] is real, the more he’ll have to let the thought of Maya go, realizing he might never get back to her. And that’s a painful thing, so then it’s about letting himself be open to the idea of this new love, whatever that might mean.

So Annie has secrets, huh? Do they have to do with any of the guys on the force that we’ve already met?
JA: Nobody that we’ve already met. No. She is not entangled with any of those monkeys. Give her a little more credit than that!

Speaking of the monkeys, are they going to give Sam a break in the upcoming episodes or will he continue to be a crazy loon in their eyes?
JA: Oh, in the first thirteen episodes, so much of it is about Sam trying to get their validation. When they’re on the job, they’re on the job together and they all work together to do what they need to do. But then, certainly during downtime and stuff, it gets interesting. The second episode is actually very interesting — it’s very loyal to the BBC [version of the show] — and it’s really going into the exploration of the differences in police techniques from 2008 and 1973. Sam is very much like, there’s a code and there’s a right and a wrong and you have to follow protocol. And Gene Hunt (Keitel) and Ray (Imperioli) and these guys are like, f–k that. You know, if there’s a chance they could close a case, they’ll plant drugs on somebody, they’ll do whatever they need to do to get them off the streets and keep the streets safe. And that battle is waged between these two points of view and it ultimately blows up in Sam’s face in a pretty horrifying way. And then it’s about how they all sort of resolve all that. But yes, the struggle will continue, they’re not going to let him off the hook anytime soon.

I’m looking forward to seeing the “creative” old school crime fighting techniques… so much more fun than all the CSI-type stuff.
JA: Yeah, totally. And you’ll see in this week’s episode that the mythology, in a weird way, helps him solve the case too. The universe is definitely operating on some odd level, giving Sam some messages and dispatches, helping him along this journey in a really trippy way.

You mentioned that this week’s ep is very loyal to the BBC version of the show, but how closely are you sticking to their outline? For people who have already seen the BBC series, are there going to be several episodes that they might feel like they’ve watched before?
JA: The second one has a lot of similarities, but significant differences. There’s not any one episode that we whole-clothed copied. Even the pilot, which was relatively similar, included all new material in the final act. Sam saying, shoot me, Colin, shoot me, and that whole thing with the kid at the end, all that stuff was ours. The one thing that is pretty similar [to the BBC show] and that was important to us to include in this [initial arc] is Sam saying in episode three, I’m here. I was four-years-old in 1973. I don’t remember where I lived — because they moved around a lot — but a four-year-old me is here somewhere. And his mother and his father, with whom he has a very troubled history, are there. So, on top of solving crimes, he goes out and finds them. And it really becomes like Back to the Future meets David Lynch meets Field of Dreams because he’s seeing his dad who basically left the family in 1973. Sam wonders, maybe this is the reason I was sent back here, to keep him from leaving. And when he sees his father, the whole thing is heartbreaking. So, yeah, the BBC focused on this family [storyline] and we’re doing our own riff on it because it seemed like such a natural thing. But there will still be differences. Even in this week’s episode, for instance, a visitor — who is a big part of this mystery of what the hell Sam’s doing there — comes into his life and starts delivering messages as to what’s going on. The only thing I will say about the visitor is that it’s not a human being. It’s this weird other vessel that’s delivering this information, and that’s something they didn’t do in the BBC…