The MP3s=”bad audio” meme grows
In the premiere of ABC’s Life on Mars Thursday, our hero, Jason O’Mara, finds himself living in 1973. (Don’t ask.) He’s wandering around in a latter-day hippie era in Manhattan with his love interest, Gretchen Mol; they go into one of those old-fashioned record stores.
Still marveling at his time-travel experience, he tells her:
“What you see here, all of this, vinyl albums, they all become obsolete. Replaced with CDs, and digital music that you listen to on MP3 players this big. And the sound, it’s… well, it’s much worse.”
The last line is played for a laugh. As this idea grows into general thinking, the labels (with iTunes) will be poised to sell us all our digital music again–in a superior compression format, and suddenly audio quality will be all the rage. Look for a compliant media to excitedly put this on their agenda as well.
As for the show, you can see the whole episode here, though it requires a lot of screwing around with a dedicated ABC video player.
The player is buggy; it appears not to be optimized for Firefox on Vista–one of those signs a certain company (Disney) is doing things for the benefit of another big company (Microsoft) and not consumers.
(And would it kill them to use standardized controls, like hitting the space bar for pause?)
I haven’t seen the BBC version of Life on Mars, which I assume is better, but the U.S. version isn’t without a sense of humor. If the frenetic scene constructions, steel-blue lighting and CSI-style patois seem a little hyperreal, it’s because they are. The intro goes on a little too long, but it’s all worth it for the transition, which includes a very nice use of the Bowie tune that gives the show its title.
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I saw the “Life On Mars” pilot episode as part of an online survey a few weeks ago. It was OK. But overall, I didn’t really care for it.
The US version is better in its re-tooled state, but it’s still a pale and limp imitation of the BBC version.
Like photocopying something with the contrast cranked all the way up, the ABC re-make loses the nuance of the original and winds up being just another cop show with a gimmick.
An Americanized copy will never measure up to the original; the mundane evils of network television production will see to that. Part of the charm of the BBC version is the small scale and short run - 16 episodes, total. The gimmick was never intended to stretch out to infinity, nor was it designed like a CSI-clone. The irony of a series about a television detective stranded without CSI-like capabilities, presented in an over-saturated, over-produced CSI-style is also ridiculous.
The show’s only hope is re-invention. What makes the original such a terrific viewing experience won’t translate to American network primetime. To survive, the producers are going to have to find a new identity for the show, because the fans of the original aren’t going to be tuning in.