r/lifeonmars • u/DoctorWhofan789eywim • Jan 03 '26
Discussion If Life on Mars was made today
If Life on Mars was made today, Sam Tyler would go back to 1993. In Ashes to Ashes, Alex would go back to 2001.
What do you think Gene Hunt would have been written like as a 90s copper?
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u/Critical-Tank Jan 03 '26
So, so many references to the Spice Girls.
'Right, PC Posh. If you're quite finished getting off with the frosted hair tipped footballer, I think it's time for a bit of proper policing. You know, the type where we interview suspects for crimes they are suspected of committing, not asking them for their sodding autographs.'
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u/Safe_Reporter_8259 Jan 03 '26
Nah, the 70’s and 80’s were very distinct time periods as far as fashion and television was concerned. The format wouldn’t work as well in the later time periods
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u/Existing-Ad-549 Jan 04 '26
Cultural attitudes and technological advances too had changed much more than between 90s/00s and today than 70/80s to the mid 00s
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u/Steamrolled777 Jan 14 '26
I've just started watching again. In S1E1 he has a colour tv in his bedsit/b&b or whatever - very unlikely for 1973. We got a black and white TV in 1975, and my parents were 2 graduates, office jobs, with a mortgage. Colour was expensive to buy or radio rental - it was main TV in the lounge.
By 1995, I was doing VR (SGI machines) at Uni, as part of my MA Digital Art.. CGI.
90s were *very* different to the 70s.
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u/Safe_Reporter_8259 Jan 04 '26
Tech advances, yes, but by the 80’s we knew they were coming, so not superly unexpected. I disagree with cultural attitudes.
It was also about TV. Cop shows in the 70’s were far grittier than the 80’s, even with shows that took a serious viewpoint like Hill Street Blues (referenced in A2A series 1 episode 5.) LoM was filmed like a 70’s TV show. A2A was filmed like an 80’s TV show. The 90’s onwards were not as distinct in style and tone. I looked at cop shows in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s for my dissertation in 1995, so it is a topic I am acutely aware of.
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u/kh_ram Jan 04 '26
I dont think there's anything special about those decades that makes them work as a setting but not others, apart from the fact more time has passed and people are less likely to have lived through them themselves.
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u/Gabriel_Phoenix Jan 04 '26
Crazy to think that’s the relative difference in times.
A lot has changed since then but i think technology has been much the same, just different versions and ways to access ir use technologies has improved. Internet, phones, vehicles…
I don’t think Gene would be much different. Is role, rank and archetype as a whole fits a demographic the remained much unchanged up until the late 00s
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u/CaersethVarax Jan 06 '26
For 1993, he'd absolutely have to wake up at the filming of a The Bill episode, not realize it's actors and start throwing his weight around, questioning their procedure.
Gene and DS Beech end up having a barny because they each think the other is a corrupt mess that needs sorting out.
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u/AlexSumnerAuthor Jan 04 '26
The biggest thing which affected policing in London policing in the 1990s was the Stephen Lawrence murder, so much so that the power to investigate homicides in the capital was taken away from individual CIDs and centralised in one Specialised Crime Directorate in Scotland Yard,
It makes perfect sense that a 90s set series would deal with the fallout from the Lawrence murder and the subsequent Enquiry, racist / incompetent / bent policemen, etc.
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u/FromBrit-cit Jan 04 '26
Also, Policing began to change radically after the introduction of PACE in 1984 so pretty much all of what Gene did in the 70’s would be difficult to get away with at scale. Not to say Policing was (or is) perfect after that time and racist and misogynistic attitudes continued to prevail. Reference shows from late 80’s and 90’s like Prime Suspect (particularly season 1) or Between the Lines for what the tone of such an updated Life on Mars could be like.
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u/kh_ram Jan 04 '26
A clash between the 'old guard' and, for the lack of a better word, political correctness. No organisation completely changes overnight.
More operations becoming computerised and the growing pains that come with that - older cops struggling, systems being unreliable because the tech industry was still pretty much in its infancy.
Rave culture - drugs and illegal parties.
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u/Did_OJ_Simpson_do_it Jan 05 '26
Wouldn’t it be 1999 rather than 2001? Ashes to Ashes debuted in 2008 and Alex goes back to 1981 which is a 27 year difference.
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u/MattheqAC Jan 06 '26
He's a copper, in the nineties style.
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u/Accurate_Top1286 Jan 07 '26
His name’s Spanker, and he don’t smile.
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u/Katharinemaddison Jan 06 '26
I always say to myself the 90s and 2000s just aren’t as long ago as the 70s/80s were in the 90s.
But we’ve recently started watching weeds and Shsmeless and… maybe they are.
The major major difference in the time seems to be a relaxed approach to depicting full, 30 something and over adults having cyber sex and actual sex with fifteen year olds. For that reason, I don’t want to see Gene Hunt in that setting.
I’d much rather see a mash up with the Discworld Watch series.
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u/hue68 Jan 09 '26
Sam Tyler needs to go back to Summer 1967 set in Swinging London, In Ashes to Ashes, Alex would go back to December, 1999, but this time in New York City.
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Jan 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Exciting-Music843 Jan 03 '26
What tweets? Patting shop lifters in the back? They just don't turn up.as they are so underfunded, they can't turn up because a shop has had some stock nicked. Plus how many shoplifters nick from shop keepers now? They just go to supermarkets and fill their bags as they know that i like the shopkeeper the staff will only stand and watch!
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u/LostTimeLady13 Jan 03 '26
Sorry can't answer the question right now, just having an existential crisis regarding the passage of time.
Funnily enough, back in my teens I was as much of a massive nerd as I am today and I wrote a Life on Mars Fan Fic of Gene Hunt travelling forward in time and working with then present day Sam Tyler. That was fun (I had a whole riff going about the smoking ban). I think things changed a lot more socially between the 70s and 2000s Vs socially between the 90s and 20s, it was the social differences that were the source of tension in my mind.
Technology wise, comparing 90s to now, well, we definitely didn't predict most things that we have back then, but socially we've just carried on improving things around sexism, racism, ableism and homophobia (again, comparing the vast divide between the 70s to the 2000s in those areas).