Episode 15: Life on Mars, Arde Madrid, Kleo
LIFE ON MARS ( England, Netflix) is a time-travel fantasy or a police procedural thriller, but probably both. It’s 2006. Det. Sam Tyler of the Manchester Police Department is engaged and on the rise when he’s hit by a car. In a hospital, he’s in a coma and fighting for his life. Inexplicably he’s also finds himself in 1973, living an alternate reality. A confused Tyler, still a detective, is now working in a police department rife with sexism and a very lenient approach to ethics. And while Tyler struggles to adapt to living in the 70s there are weird reminders that it may be Tyler’s existence fighting to emerge from a coma in 2006 that is the actual reality. Is this 1973 existence a dream, is he crazy or has he really traveled back in time? Initially he fights being back in 1973 but his growing love for fellow copper Annie keeps challenging him as to how badly he wants to return to 2006. If indeed he even can.
ARDE MADRID (Spain, Amazon Prime) is a quirky comedy set in 1960s Spain where the repressive Franco government rules. Actress Ava Gardner is living in Madrid contemplating her next movie and holding wild parties with a bohemian mix of artists, writers and intellectuals. The government suspects that dreaded subversive Commies might be in that mix. They enlist a virginal teacher, Anna Marie and Manolo, a low-level con-man to pose as hired help and spy on Gardner. The central focus is on the unsophisticated Anna Marie whose life is changed by the mercurial Gardner household while she begrudgingly forms a romantic relationship with the charming but larcenous Manolo.
KLEO, ( Germany, Netflix) a dark comedy, is set in Berlin just around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before that fall Kleo Staub, a delightful, steely-eyed young East German, is in love with a colleague, that is when she’s not working as a lethally successful Stasi assassin. Inexplicably, after pulling off a very clever hit in a West German nightclub, she’s thrown in an East German prison for 3 years. The Berlin Wall falls and Kleo is also released. A kind of German KILL BILL, the series follows a chillingly resourceful Kleo on her revenge tour as she knocks off everyone responsible for her imprisonment. Along the way she is, at first pursued, but then forms an alliance with a West German cop who helps her unravel the dark secrets behind the powers that are still trying to eliminate her.
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