"I have got to take these back with me." -- Sam Tyler

I never saw the BBC Life On Mars , because it's not out on DVD for us colonists. So thanks a lot, DVD people, as you once again leave money on the table. I was, however, age zero through 10 in the 1970s, so I remember it.

Well, I remember sweating a lot. Nobody had air conditioning back then. You can even tell in the TV and movies: Everyone looks uncomfortable. It's because they were. The hair products and itchy polyester were uncomfortable enough, but dripping sweat on top of that, literally, was not cool. Also literally.

Life On Mars may be my favorite new show. It's a 1970s cop show with the sci-fi-ish twist that a dude has time traveled from today to back then, and is stuck there. At first I thought it wouldn't dwell so much on the time-travel stuff, since it did not go for the usual time-travel cliche right away, like our hero is a strange visitor who appears naked in a back alley: Sam Tyler wakes up with his clothes and car and his haircut all 1973 vintage. The neatest part is his car CD player is playing David Bowie when he leaps, and when he wakes up it's an 8-track tape.

Sam is contacted from the future through his TV and radio. I'm interested in how the time-flip is explained, but really, I like the 1970s cop action more.

Every cop show should be like the ones in the 1970s. The movie Shaft sets the bar for casual, quotable coolness. Life on Mars replicates the spirit of both, with a soundtrack like Ronco Super Hits and cop action like it ought to be: Cops in blazers and slacks, kicking in doors and roughing up thugs. They even jump over their desks in slow motion on the way out of the station.

Harvey Keitel steals every scene as the archetype police chief, just like on Starsky and Hutch. Everything Keitel says is from the bad-mother quotebook. I saw a commercial this morning for an episode that hasn't aired at this writing, when Keitel says, "I'd like to blindfold your butt to stop you from talking."

Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos busts out 1970s man-stache that Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit would be proud of.

The 1970s stuff through the eyes of Sam Tyler is just neat. When he enters a record shop, he worshipfully flips through vinyl records, and says, "I have got to take these back with me." The scene in the first episode where thanks to a New York landmark, he realizes he's not in 2008, is awe-striking.

Life on Mars is well worth a watch. The time travel elements don't concern me yet, unless they take away too much time from the gritty cop action.

If it was me, I'd stay in the 1970s and not worry about going back, except for the little matter of girlfriend Lisa Bonet waiting on him back there. I mean, forward there. Also, I would miss central air conditioning.