You are surrounded by Armed Bastards.
"My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident and woke up in 1973. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever's happened, it's like I've landed on a different planet. Now, maybe if I can work out the reason, I can get home."
— Sam Tyler, opening titles.
BBC
Fish Out Of Water crime drama, 2006-2007; there was a deliberate decision to
end the show after two seasons.
DCI Sam Tyler is a normal 2006 detective. Until he gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973...
He's still a police officer, but a
DI now. He's got to get used to a policing world with no DNA profiling, no computers and no Police and Criminal Evidence Act.
The seemingly most rational explanation is that he's in some kind of coma, as messages from 2006 keep entering his head... but Sam's 1973 is so perfectly detailed, down to details that he shouldn't be able to imagine, that he has no idea what's going on. More to the point, the killer who kidnapped Sam's girlfriend on the day that he was run over appears to be active in 1973. Is that why he's in 1973? If he solves the mystery in the past, can he save his girlfriend in the future... and go home?
Surprise hit character? DCI Gene Hunt. To quote Sam Tyler, he's an "overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding" (Hunt's response: "You make that sound a
bad thing"). Sexist to boot, he's highly un-PC, highly quotable (if rather vulgar) and gained a wide range of fans.
Notable for being surprisingly sophisticated and intelligent, a critical and commercial success, as well as being artfully designed and shot.
An
American version debuted in fall '08 on ABC, starring Jason O'Mara as Sam and Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt. A
So Bad Its Horrible pilot, with Colm Meaney playing the Hunt role and looking a bit neutered in it, led to a recast (only O'Mara survived) and move of location to
New York City. This new version had promise, possibly due to hewing as close as possible to the British original, but was cancelled after one season. Fortunately, the producers were given enough notice to wrap up the plot.
A Spanish version, called "La chica de ayer", has recently finished after eight episodes.
A follow-on series set in 1981, called
Ashes To Ashes, started in February 2008.
This show provides examples of:
General Themes
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: Gene tolerates Sam's bizarre behaviour and ahead-of-its-time political correctness because he recognises Sam's skill in catching criminals. The others only put up with it because Sam outranks them.
- Connecticut Yankee: Sam tries to introduce 'modern' police methodology and encourage his colleagues to see past their bigoted attitudes, though with limited success. One problem is that while in theory Sam is better trained, the techniques he's learned are often useless in 1973. Why wait for a search warrant if you can just kick down the door? What's the point of knowing you shouldn't move a corpse before it's been checked for fingerprints, if the technology to do so hasn't been invented yet? Why talk in the formal style for interviewing witnesses (useful when every word is recorded, and saying the wrong thing can get a case thrown out of court) when it only confuses people?
- Fish Out Of Temporal Water: Sam Tyler
- Mind Screw: Most of the show, but especially the two season finales.
- Odd Couple: Sam and Gene (he's by the book, he's BYOB), but also Chris and Ray.
- Sensitive Guy And Manly Man: Sam and Gene
- Police Procedural
- Running Gag: "That's not how it goes!" (Sam constantly getting the You Do Not Have To Say Anything speech wrong); "You are surrounded by armed bastards!" (even carried over to Ashes To Ashes); Gene's flasks and fondness for American westerns.
- The Seventies (Manifested as seventies clothing, hair, and unfortunate blue eyeshadow.)
- They Fight Crime: For the most part, the plots are standard police investigations, though occasionally made significant by Sam's techniques or history.
Characters and setting
Tropes and plots
- Almost Kiss: That would be Sam and Annie.
- Apathy Killed The Cat: Averted. Sam is constantly wondering why he's here, wherever 'here' is.
- As You Know: In the series finale, Sam is secretly taping an 'interrogation' in the lost and found. When Gene handcuffs the suspect to a chair, Sam describes for the benefit of the tape, to which Gene says 'What're you, the narrator?'
- Chained To A Bed: Sam ends up like this (and naked) after standing up to a crime lord, so that they can take blackmail pictures of him. Gene, to whom Sam has been ranting about 'coppers have to be above reproach', ends up discovering him and is beside himself with glee at the sight. So much so, that he invites DC Annie Cartwright into the room. Moral of the story - don't piss off crime lords. Or Gene Hunt.
- Celebrity Paradox: Sam makes a Doctor Who reference. And being from 2006 and all, he's probably thinking of New Who.
- He was a kid in the 70s, though, so I doubt it.
- John Simm played The Master in New Who. But not until the year after Sam Tyler died
- Wasn't Sam Tyler named after New Who's Tylers? In the American version his mother is named Rose.
- Dream Apocalypse
- False Flag Operation: Series finale (season 2 episode 8)
- Fingertip Drug Analysis: Sam identifies heroin by taste.
- Flanderization (Chris Skelton's naivete starts to get out of control in the second series.)
- Flashed Badge Hijack: Subverted in the first episode of Series Two. Sam is unable to move out of the way of an oncoming car. In a desperate attempt to do something, he holds up his badge, closing his eyes as he anticipates the crash. The car comes to a stop inches away. Because it's tires were punctured, courtesy of Annie Cartwright's stinger.
- Framing The Guilty Party: When Sam tries it, it causes Stable Time Loops of a sort Sam doesn't really want. When Gene Hunt tries it, Sam objects.
- The Great British Copper Capture
- Holy Shit Quotient: Through the roof in the last episode.
- IC Number (Subverted: IC codes haven't been introduced yet, and nobody else understands them.)
- Im Mr Future Pop Culture Reference:
- It Will Never Catch On: When Sam suggests that they install a TV in the pub, everyone is extremely skeptical. Seriously, they look at him like he grew a third eye.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Gene Hunt, Ray Carling
- Lady In Red: actually a plot point in Season 1.
- Literary Allusion Title: named after the Bowie song.
- Luke I Am Your Father
- Male Gaze
- Medium Blending: The claymation of Camberwick Green.
- Mind Screw: The last two episodes.
- Misaimed Fandom: At first, at least. From Series 2 onwards the creators seem to have realised that most of the fans preferred Gene Hunt's to Sam's side in most of their arguments, and wrote accordingly.
- Mood Dissonance: The last episode especially. Seriously, the main hero's suicide shouldn't feel so... awesome.
- Mushroom Samba: 2007!Sam accidentally gets a drug overdose, leading 1973!Sam to hallucinate a memorable version of the childrens' show "Camberwick Green".
- Noodle Incident: Whatever it is Mrs Luckhurst does that's "illegal in some parts of Wales" and makes Gene Hunt scream bloody murder.
- Old Fashioned Copper: Gene Hunt, Ray Carling
- Perp Sweating
- Police Lineup
- Rabid Cop: Subverted: by today's standards, Sam is the only cop who isn't rabid.
- Rape Is Ok When It Is Female On Male: Related to the Chained To A Bed above. At first, seemingly subverted (the act is shown as nightmarish and disconcerting), but the next day, everyone is chuckling at Sam and he himself seems merely embarrassed.
- Resuscitate The Dog
- Season Finale
- Smoking Hot Fight Although Sam and Gene have had a few of these, the one that really stands out has to be the fight between them in the hospital, after which Gene is shown smoking. Draw your own conclusions.
- Suicide Is Painless: Sam goes back to his own time, realises the Test Card F girl was right all along, and takes a running jump off the roof of the police station while Life On Mars blares triumphantly in the background.
- Taking The Heat: A union leader tried to cover up a fatal industrial accident at his mill to keep it from being shut down (and his members losing their jobs) by confessing to having murdered the accident victim.
- Train Job: The climax.
- Trapped In Another World: And it's brown.
- What Year Is This
- Whoopi Epiphany Speech: "If you can feel, you're alive."
- You Cant Fight Fate
- You Cant Go Home Again
- You Do Not Have To Say Anything (Subverted: British police used a different caution in 1973 than the one Sam is used to from 2007. Sam repeatedly tries and fails to recite the 70's version, at one point coming up with the Miranda Warning.)
