Life on Mars

 The text is a hybrid genre, Crime and Sci-fi. It follows the key conventions of both a modern day crime drama and a 1970 crime drama. With the modern day it shows typical conventions such as large offices with computers all over the place, a main detective who is our main character, also within the present day our damsel in distress is revealed to be his girlfriend and partner. Moving on to the 1970 era we have dark rooms with paperwork all over the place and only men within the detective section, most are smoking and in a scene the head detective hits our main character. Also within the 1970 section it establishes a buddy partner narrative which is a key convention of crime cop dramas and even films. All of this shows how different detective work is from the 1970 to modern day like women and overall rules and corruption within the stations.

This episode is a restricted narrative because we as the audience know just as much as the main character does and while he tries to figure things out we do at the same time. The main enigma that remains unsolved is why and how the main character is in the past which is not solved. But what from the start seemed like the primary enigma of the murder case is solved by the main character in the past.

Characters are represented differently in the show, each confiding to their times representational norms. E.G, Sam's girlfriend in the modern day goes by her own initiative and goes after a hunch showing the times more confidence in women not doing what men tell them however Sam had told her that she's off the case, showing a degree of male control. Oppositely in the past sequences, Liz, is only medical and help out with admin work and is not allowed on any cases, she is also very oppressed and called names by the stereotypical men of the time. Ethnicity is also a factor in the representations in life on mars, the main character for that is Nelson.


In life on mars, many characters are represented differently. Gender is represented in a number of ways through certain characters. Each character typically confides to their times representational norms. For example, Sam's girlfriend in the modern day goes by her own initiative and goes after a hunch showing the times more confidence in women not doing what men tell them however Sam had told her that she's off the case, showing a degree of male control. Oppositely in the past sequences, Liz, is only medical and help out with admin work and is not allowed on any cases, she is also very oppressed and called names by the stereotypical men of the time. Gene Hunt is an example of the stereotypical man, a leader, vicious and controlling. He asserts his dominance amongst the other officers at the station. This relates to Stuart Hall's theory of representation, where media language is used to create representations usually to assert power. As in for Life on Mars the subordinate group being primarily women and white men being the one presented with power.

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