Televison in the global age - life on mars

Audience targeting;

Marketing-

Voice over helps explain the trailer.
Music is upbeat, mood is upbeat.
Immigrant song; Led Zeppelin, link to the 70's which lures in a demographic who listened to them.

Shows main character;
-direct address
- Familiar face to the BBC
-White, young male actor.

Sidekick was previously in "Doctor Who"- Sci-fi link.
Genre is explicit to in the trailer. (ICONOGRAPHY)
Fandom : Life on Mars had and still has  a cult following among TV fans .

Life on Mars is a British television series broadcast on BBC One between 9 January 2006 and 10 April 2007. The series combines elements of speculative fiction and police procedural, featuring a police officer from the Greater Manchester Police(played by John Simm) from the year 2006 who wakes up in 1973 after being involved in a road accident. The title is a reference to David Bowie's 1973 single Life on Mars?, with its lyrics "Take a look at the law man, beating up the wrong guy".

An American adaptation of the series was produced by ABC and ran for one season from October 2008 to April 2009. A Spanish adaptation of the series was broadcast from April to June 2009. A Russian adaptation of the series entitled The Dark Side of the Moon was broadcast in November 2012. Czech adaptation World under the Head was broadcast by Czech Television from January to March 2017. The South Korean adaptation began broadcasting in June 2018. A Chinese remake is currently being produced set in 1990s.A sequel to the series, Ashes to Ashes, referencing another David Bowie song, aired on BBC One from February 2008 to May 2010.

Audience;

Critical reaction to the first series of Life on Mars was extremely positive. Steve O'Brien, writing for SFX, declared, "It looks like BBC One has ... a monster hit on its hands ... It's funny ... and dramatic and exciting, and we're really not getting paid for saying this".Alison Graham, television editor for the Radio Times, described the series as "a genuinely innovative and imaginative take on an old genre". James Walton of The Daily Telegraph commented, "Theoretically, this should add up to a right old mess. In practice, it makes for a thumpingly enjoyable piece of television — not least because everybody involved was obviously having such a great time". Sam Wollaston of The Guardian wrote: "Life on Mars was more than just a jolly, tongue-in-cheek romp into the past ... Once there, in 1973, we find ourselves immersed in a reasonably gripping police drama — yes, The Sweeney, perhaps, with better production values ... Or put another — undeniably laboured — way, as poor Sam Tyler walks through his sunken dream, I'm hooked to the silver screen".Although Peter Paterson of the Daily Mail reflected the views of many other commentators on the first episode when he wondered, "Can its intriguing conceit be sustained over eight one-hour episodes?", Critical reaction remained generally positive throughout the programme's run. Of the second series, Alison Graham believed that "Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt are shaping up nicely as one of the great TV detective partnerships ... It's vastly enjoyable and manages to stay just about believable thanks to some strong writing and, of course, the two marvellous central performances".

Nancy Banks-Smith, in The Guardian, felt that the time-paradox aspect of the programme had become somewhat confusing. Banks-Smith summed up the programme's success as "an inspired take on the usual formula of Gruff Copper of the old school, who solves cases by examining the entrails of a chicken, and Sensitive Sidekick, who has a degree in detection.".

Two days after the final episode's transmission, Life on Mars was attacked in the British press by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, who claimed that Gene Hunt's use of homophobic insults in the programme could encourage copycat bullying in schools.The BBC stated that Life on Mars was targeted at an adult audience, and argued that Hunt's characterisation was "extreme and tongue-in-cheek".

In 2019 the Guardian ranked it 99th in the top 100 TV shows of the 21st Century. 

Postmodernism

Postmodernism

Intertextuality; explicit specific reference to another media product or genre 

Parody and pastiche ; whole scene or settings in the style of another media product or genre

Bricolage; the idea that the entire meaning of a media text is  totally created by  the fragments and references that make it up

Irony; less serious in tone, moral/social issues not explicitly discussed in text

Ambiguity; no single meaning or message 

Fragmented narrative; nonlinear or confusing narrative elements and structure

Reflexivity; drawing attention to itself as a media text , deliberately artificial, breaking the fourth wall

Hyper reality; an artificial reality made up of layers of media representations that Baudrillard claimed we are all now  living in 

Simulacra ; the artificial objects, people and  settings that make up an artificial hyperreality 

In Life on Mars, the protagonist lives in a hyperreality through narrative, rather than the audience experiencing it . This is portrayed through the use of mise-en-scene, iconography and costume. When the protagonist first time travels to the 1970's one of the first things we see as change is the IPOD which is playing "Life on mars' by David Bowie change to a cassette of the song, this is because the car has also changed through the time travelling. Another major thing we establish as the demographic, is the change of clothes that the protagonist is wearing. He swaps from a suit and shirt, to a brown blazer, flared jeans and cowboy boots (which is another staple from the 1970's). As the main character ventures out of the car and into the street, the camera uses a lot of tracking shots to follow his journey in discovering where he is. This means that the narrative is restricted as nothing is revealed to the audience before he discovers it for himself and we take the journey with him. The narrative also isn't fragmented as it follows the story in a linear manner, however the events that take place are confusing for him as he only learns fragments of information along the way. In a scene from the episode, Sam ( the protagonist) , is sitting in his room and is watching TV, Sam then starts speaking to the tv presenter, through the television and he starts to reply, this is deemed as breaking the fourth wall between them both BUT the fourth wall is not broken focus, the audience as the program specifically doesn't draw attention to itself as a media product.