Stephen King’s All-Time Favorite Series Is This 16-Episode Sci-Fi Thriller Masterpiece

After publishing over 60 novels and more than 200 short stories — a catalog that’s inspired more than a few Hollywood classics – you might say Stephen King knows a thing or two about good stories. The internationally bestselling author is known for filling up bookshelves with his catalog of horror classics, but King often folds other genres into his spine-tingling epics — or, depending on the tale he wants to tell, shifts away from horror entirely. But King also knows a thing or two about combining genres into a gripping, cohesive whole. One of the only television categories with an output capable of surpassing King’s prolific oeuvre is the crime procedural, and there’s never been one quite as unique as King’s favorite (according to a tweet from 2020): Life on Mars.

Alongside King’s enthusiastic praise (“One of my favorite shows of all time,” his tweet reads, “the kind you go to when you’re feeling sad.”), Life on Mars routinely graces best-of lists and remains a critical darling, given its enviably perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. Airing on the BBC from 2006 to 2007 and named after the iconic David Bowie song of the same title, the quietly brilliant cult classic technically counts as a science fiction drama, but that’s only one ingredient in its intricate recipe. Life on Mars is a feast that never disregards the forest for the trees — a genre-bending fusion of mystery, suspense, psychological thriller, period drama, surrealism, and, yes, sci-fi. Boasting a firecracker of a narrative hook, one of King’s favorite shows dusts off and reinvigorates a predictable genre through an inventive, compelling premise that hasn’t lost any of its edge even after 19 years.

What Is ‘Life on Mars’ About?

After surviving a violent collision with a speeding car, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler (John Simm) loses consciousness and wakes up in a different world. He no longer exists in modern 2006, but in the Manchester of 1973. His job is the one unchanged touchstone, although his rank was demoted. Now, he’s second-in-command to DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), a brash, uncouth, and borderline narcissistic macho man who styles himself after silver-screen antiheroes like Gary Cooper. Even though Sam, for lack of anything else to do, winds up fulfilling his criminal-catching duties, he wanders through his days in a daze. The man is emotionally lost at sea, desperate to not merely adjust to his new reality, but understand what on Earth has happened to him — preferably, without losing his fragile stability.

Unfortunately for Sam’s state of mind, his endless questions lack enough evidence for even a detective to piece together. Is he in a coma? Is he dead and experiencing an odd, personalized afterlife? Did some supernatural force make him an unwilling time traveler? Or, scariest of all, was his entire life in 2006 a fantasy concocted by an amnesiac mind prone to delusions? Hallucinated visits from a creepy, doll-holding girl and hearing voices through the television aren’t any help. Whatever the ugly truth might be, Sam became a decorated detective for a reason; as he lends his perspective to crimes that might or might not be real, he’s determined to sniff out where he is, how he arrived, and the way home — and, like any good quasi-time traveler, try to prevent tragic future events by rewriting the past.

‘Life on Mars’ Expertly Balances Multiple Genres

Like a menace lurking in the background, Life on Mars‘ psychological suspense always bleeds into its case-of-the-week style (the majority of which have enough meat on their bones to warrant using the format). Sam’s physical and mental displacement determines his every action and his default state as a roiling emotion storm — desperation, despair, anger, resentment, loneliness, or snide dismissal, depending on the day. His predicament’s ambiguity leaves the audience questioning Sam’s reality as much as the man himself. Life on Mars might eventually trick us into lowering our guards and daring to accept Sam’s nostalgic life as the new normal, but the ground under our feet is never firm — and that’s a good thing.

Life on Mars rarely missteps where its ambitious hybrid tone is concerned. It nails every point on its genre polygon with a clarity as sharp as an adrenaline shot in the arm, and rarely overtips that mash-up’s balance. Creative liberties abound with the ’70s setting, but the costumes, flashy classic cars, and realistic sets (sparse, grimy, cramped, or chaotic) organically immerse us in a tactile, tangible world. The point isn’t grandeur, but selling Sam’s culture shock, especially since his dilemma goes beyond the micro-trope of a contemporary person adjusting to antique technology.

Sam and his colleagues practically speak a different language. All law enforcement institutions invite warranted scrutiny, but in this fictional universe, Sam embodies the ideal officer: his moral center, empathy, and unflappable commitment to justice, procedure, and a suspect’s right to safe treatment routinely clash with the normalized toxic masculinity, sexism, racism, and homophobia surrounding him. Life on Mars enjoys its genre trappings too much to count as a profound rejection of police brutality and corruption, but it does scrutinize bigotry and condemn its abundant existence.

‘Life on Mars’ Uses Its Setting To Address Dark Themes

This retro setting and procedural predictability almost qualifies Life on Mars for the cozy mystery category. While it does provide that entertainment, the series fearlessly tackles bleaker, less palatable themes on an episodic basis and weaves comparable topics like mental health, death, abuse, and suicide into its overall arc — without trivializing these subjects into episodic tropes or diminishing Sam’s distress into another narratively hollow example of the “crazy unreliable narrator.” Putting Sam through the emotional equivalent of Saw-like torture isn’t just a platform for Simm — years before his giddy, menacing take on Doctor Who‘s the Master ensconced him within nerd culture history — to deliver a captivating and achingly vulnerable performance, but an excuse to poke holes in foundational philosophical questions. What, where, and who makes us fulfilled and whole? Can such musings even be answered? Unsettling suspense shadows the series like an unknown figure in the corner of your eye, gradually spooling out its destabilizing uncertainty.

LIkewise, without giving anything away, Life on Mars ends as starkly as it begins: a bold, daring choice that somehow succeeds at being both gut-wrenching and soothing, leaving audiences conflicted and drained, grieving yet smiling. And while the finale technically answers Sam’s questions, everything stays open to interpretation. Life on Mars could have easily become a long-running television mainstay, but co-creators Matthew Graham, Tony Jordan, and Ashley Pharoah knew when to conclude this tale. After 16 episodes, they do so on the highest note. Frankly, the final episode deserves its flowers as one of television’s best series finales of all time.

‘Life on Mars’ Forces Its Characters and Their Relationships To Grow

As for King describing Life on Mars as “the kind [of show] you go to when you’re feeling sad,” the series is oddly comforting. Its individual pieces, while charming on their own merits, hold even more appeal when they’re this smoothly integrated — the procedural predictability, the throwback fashion, the era-accurate music (this writer considers the first needle drop, when the chorus of “Life on Mars” soars in time with the camera spinning around a bewildered Sam, to be a perfect scene), and the witty repartee between a tiny but mighty cast of supporting characters. As each member of the department’s main five stumbles into their character growth, their relationships deepening from heated sparring to healthy loyalty, they become an unconventional team. The scripts and actors unite to create fully fleshed-out individuals with collective chemistry, whether or not they’re inventions of Sam’s misfiring synapses. Sam Tyler himself is everything you could want in a protagonist: compassionate, empathetic, and sensitive, quick to cry, and all slim angles and haunted eyes in his array of leather jackets.

Gene Hunt, Sam’s boss-nemesis-frenemy, is the opposite ad infinitum. Yet despite his repulsive qualities — all those bigoted wisecracks — and his adamant refusal to evolve, he emerges as a fan favorite thanks to his flashes of humanity and his venomously witty tongue. The push-pull, love-hate friction between Sam and Gene might be one of the best instances of this dynamic to grace our television screens. These men constantly trade acerbic disdain or resort to good old-fashioned punching because they represent opposing worldviews. The odd couple compliment and bring out the worst in each other (sometimes simultaneously), reluctant as they are to surrender their moral high ground or confront their demons. You could quite literally twist their arms, and they still wouldn’t admit to the mutual respect and affection they begrudgingly develop as the series progresses. Sam and Gene are a powerhouse, stand-out partnership in a genre replete with seemingly mismatched, yet actually perfect, detective pairings.

Life on Mars‘ world continues in the 1980s-set spin-off series Ashes to Ashes, with Sam replaced by a new protagonist with a similar journey, Detective Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes). While charming, underrated, and heartfelt, Ashes to Ashes never reaches the same heights as its predecessor. Plans for a third installment with both Simm and Glenister reprising their roles, titled Lazarus after a superb track from the late Bowie’s final album, never came to fruition. Returning to this complex, twisty world marked by ambiguity, fragile mortality, and a minuscule but indefatigable light at the end of the tunnel, would be thoroughly welcome. That said, Life on Mars stands alone. Stephen King might phrase the following with more panache, but if perfection ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.