Matthew Graham is worth seeking out for the way Life on Mars makes familiar police work feel unsafe. We rate its uneasy, character-led storytelling highly, though the cases themselves can be more ordinary than the premise.
Fi1m perspective
In Life on Mars (2006), Sam Tyler has a detective's training and no reliable explanation for what has happened to him. He appears to have travelled back in time, but a coma or a crisis in his own mind might account for it. Graham, Ashley Pharoah and Tony Jordan make that uncertainty intrude on the familiar work of detection. We felt unsettled by Sam's predicament because the man expected to establish the facts cannot establish his own circumstances. It is an effective way of making a police story gripping before the case itself has earned our attention.
This Life (1996), to which Graham contributed as a writer, supplies a useful earlier point of reference. The muddle of early professional life is funny and affecting, with Daniela Nardini and Jack Davenport helping us forgive an opening that feels too carefully arranged. It would be unfair to claim all of that for Graham. But the programme's appeal helps explain what we value in Life on Mars: people worth spending time among, even when the plotting needs their help.
The move into science fiction was already apparent in The Last Train (1999), a post-apocalyptic series Graham created and wrote. Ashes to Ashes (2008–2010) later extended the world of Life on Mars. His later credits include episodes of Doctor Who (2006, 2011) and the Arthur C. Clarke adaptation Childhood's End (2015), taking him into both established television and the work of another storyteller.
Life on Mars also shows the limits of a clever premise. Some of its police stories are ordinary, and the arguments between its central pair begin to repeat. John Simm and Philip Glenister keep those exchanges compelling, but even good company cannot make repetition disappear. The series gives us enough reason to care about Sam that these lapses remain tolerable. Start with Life on Mars, and allow it a few routine cases on the way.
Biography
Matthew Graham is a British television writer and producer. He is the co-creator, with Ashley Pharoah, of the BBC series Life on Mars (2006–2007) and its sequel Ashes to Ashes (2008–2010).
Graham began his career in 1990 writing for children's television, including co-penning episodes of Streetwise. He later contributed to EastEnders, Byker Grove, Spooks, Hustle and episodes of Doctor Who (including "Fear Her" in 2006). He has also written for The Spanish Princess (2019) and adapted Childhood's End (2015). In 2006 he formed Monastic Productions with Pharoah.
