Life after hours.

Remember when you were little, and your parents got ready to go out to a glamourous party, and you suspected (rightly) that they were just excited to not think about you for a few hours? The smell of your mother's good perfume was everywhere, and you hated the new babysitter because she was a nobody. So your parents learned to try to distract you with other fun things for the evening.

That has nothing at all to do with tonight, of course, but just in case you have decided to skip the Bloggers Party, because you don't like pizza or the LA Times, or both, and you think a bevy of bloggers sounds like it might be on somebody's hit list anyway, you might want to check out Life on Mars on ABC at 10 tonight.

I love this show so much I've watched each episode at least twice (this will be the 3rd episode.) Sam Tyler is a NYC policeman, and got hit by a car a few minutes into the first episode. He woke up a few minutes late in 1973. Still NYC, but different, in a warm glow, with less cars and more dirt. Not the Twin Towers, however; they are newly built, still gleaming in the sun.

Of course he immediately tries to find out what's going on. Every once in a while he can hear voices or see a faint image from the present, where people talk to him, and about him, as if he's in a hospital bed. He can't figure it out: is he in a coma, a time traveler, dead? All the people around him in 1973 think he has a concussion, and assure him it IS real. As he says, if his own mind is making this up, "there are SO MANY details!"

The production designer must have had a blast with this. His old precinct station is still there, but no more cell phones, computers, etc. You talk with an operator on the phone. Lots of mod and hippie clothes. And I don't like music, but there is plenty of 1970's songs, and it does set the mood. (On the tv boards, people keep saying the DVDs won't have all this music, because it's too expensive. So is it cheaper to buy music rights for tv than for a DVD?)

Jason O'Mara is a pretty hunky Irishman, almost-40 years old, so none of that 20's baby stuff here. He has a girl in 2008 he loves, but the hippie girl in his apartment building who prefers no-clothes with her pot, may distract him soon.

Some of this back to the past is overdone, and I don't think throwing in so much news from back then, so people will get it, is doing the show any favors. But I love the mystery of what he's going through, his fish out of water adventures in the 70's, and the New York City vibe. Harvey Keitel as his police boss is too physically weak for the role; he should buff up, like John Locke in Lost.

But so far, 4 stars!

Be good! And see you in the morning!