Life On Mars: the ending posed more questions than it answered. Photograph: BBC/Kudos
In the build-up to the 16th and final episode of Life On Mars, all the talk centred on the ending. Unavoidably so. In the thick of all the debate about how Sam Tyler's strange fate would unravel, it was as if this enthralling series would ultimately be judged on how successfully its writers wrapped it up. As if good storytelling is only ever about satisfying denouement. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. And, to its eternal credit, the finale refused to dodge complications. Right up to the final frame, it kept us in uneasy thrall. After all it had put us through, how could it not?
Judging from the comments on my Life On Mars posts in recent weeks, every fan of the show had a wildly different idea about how exactly it ought to roll to its appointed end. Fittingly, the final episode provided more endings than you could shake a sherbet fountain at. Five minutes in and we're wrong-footed into believing that Tyler only needs to destroy Gene Hunt to find his way home. Then we're caught off-balance again, led to assume that Tyler is actually residing in 1973 and suffering from amnesia. Serenaded by Tom Waits' I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You, Tyler and Annie Cartwright almost get it on. And then they don't. If you weren't on the edge of your seat with knuckles chewed to a pulp by this point, then you were watching the football on the other side.
Was he mad? Was he in a coma? Or had Tyler actually gone back in time? As it turned out, a bit of all three. He was restored to the present, revived from his coma and reacquainted with the technological modern world and scientific policing methods. Finding it not to his liking one little bit, he jumps off a roof and finds himself back in 1973 where he finally gets the girl. Phew indeed.
Here was an ending that posed more questions than it answered and some will feel cheated by that outcome. Not me. Ultimately, Life On Mars resolved itself not by easy closure. It ended with magic sprinkled all around, leaving us all to believe what we wanted to believe. I'll happily settle for that. Will you?
