Life On Mars

I've quite enjoyed the second and final season of Life on Mars, but more for the 1973 cop show action than for the "is he in a coma or is he really in 1973" intrigue. Presumably Tuesday's last ever episode will resolve the issue one way or another, but I don't think anything short of a The Prisoner-style wig out would rescue that particular plot thread.

If they do have to come up with something a little more straightforward, we could do a lot worse than this theory from Barbelith poster Feverfew about Sam's adventures in 1973:

What if Gene was driving the car that Sam was hit by in 2006, and is simply sitting by his bed telling him all these stories about how different being a copper was when he was in the force thirty-three years ago? And Sam's subconscious is just integrating them into an ongoing narrative, with the voices of the outside world only turning up when Gene goes outside for a fag or whatever?

I'd had a theory that we'd see Sam wake up and return to work, where we'd see that one of his superiors was one of the squad from 1973 – Chris, say – leaving us to wonder whether Sam had simply been remembering old stories he'd heard about the bad old days. Feverfew's idea works much better.