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Contains spoilers up to and including the episode discussed, but is spoiler free for subsequent episodes of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.
“I believe that I have the right to feel a little upset. You see, I believed that I commanded your unswerving loyalty, your love, affection, and unquestioning obedience. Apparently I was mistaken. However, given the evidence with which you were confronted, I can understand why that loyalty might have wavered. What I find it somewhat harder to understand is how you miserable tossers could, for one second, believe that I could be a frigging bastard murderer! Oh, and another thing, I should inform you that I intend to drink the equivalent of the North Sea in whiskey tonight, so raid your piggy banks.”
A watertight case against a local boxing manager, Terry Haslam, falls apart in court thanks to the testimony of a boxer, and, as you would expect, Gene takes it badly. So badly, in fact, that he gets extremely drunk and throws a brick through the manager’s window, threatening to kill him. Sam leaves Gene heading back to Haslam’s house to retrieve his forgotten gun, but things get considerably worse when Gene phones Sam the next morning, asking for his help – he appears to have killed a man.
This episode of Life on Mars really was two series in the making. It’s astonishing to think just how much the characters have developed since the start of the programme, and it's magnificent to see. Sure, Chris is generally pretty clueless, but he’s trying. And Sam and Annie finally have an easy, gently flirtation that is joyous to watch after all this time.
But it’s nothing compared to the growth in Sam and Gene’s relationship. Gene remains the blustering sheriff, determined to get justice and outraged when it doesn’t happen, but he’s no longer willing to be bribed to keep the streets of Manchester safe. And he trusts Sam. He’d never come out and say it, but he knows that the only way to get the truth is to let Sam do a thorough investigation, collecting actual evidence and drawing conclusions from that.
Most wonderfully of all, though, is that Gene’s trust is reciprocated. Sam is disgusted by Frank Morgan’s insistence that Gene is guilty – as Annie perceptively notes, Sam needs Gene to be innocent. His certainty that Gene isn’t a killer in the previous episode is put to a much greater test here, and he’s not disappointed. Of course Gene didn’t do it. We needed that to be the case just as much as Sam.
Next time: The final episode of Life on Mars – will Sam make it home? Does he even want to go there?
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