Gene/Sam - Friendship or Gene/Alex- Love both great together.

comedysuze:

John Simm: ‘I wish I’d done another series of Life on Mars’

John was in virtually every scene of Life On Mars and completed a punishing schedule over two series, away from his wife and two children. His decision to leave forced the writers to scrap plans for a third series and then unfold Gene’s untold story without him over three series of sequel Ashes To Ashes.

“If anything, maybe I was a bit hasty with that. I should have done another Life On Mars. Maybe one more,” he reflects.

“I missed my family and I missed being away from home. The reasons were genuine. If they’d have moved it to London, I would have done it.

“And then, ironically enough, they did the spin-off in London,” he laughs. “Ashes To Ashes was set in London. I saw that and I thought, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, we could have worked something out.’ It’s a shame. It’s gone now.”

He adds: “I get bored — it was, ‘I’ve done everything I can with this character, there’s nowhere else I can go.’ There were so many different reasons and a lot of them were the fact that I couldn’t do anything else with Sam Tyler. He just became a sort of shaking his head and tutting. He didn’t get the funny lines in it.

“I think they found it hard to write for him, whereas they got more and more pleasure of writing for Gene. Quite understandably, because he was a fantastic character to write for.

“And so I can feel a backlash coming — and I could in the back of my head with Life On Mars, that I thought we’d done enough. 16 hours non-stop on screen.

“It’s only now, with years and years and years of hindsight that I think, ‘It was so iconic that show.’ Then maybe one more. I don’t know. But there’s no point regretting things like that. They did Ashes To Ashes and that was a great success and Phil’s done fantastically well out of it. I had great fun. And I’m quite pleased with my 16 hours of Seventies’ cop drama.”

Some fans hoped he would return for the finale of Ashes. “No. That was never going to happen. It was a totally different show. I didn’t want to and they didn’t ask me.

“It was very strange. I watched the first episode and it was so weird watching those characters without me stood next to them. Because they were all in my head.

“I couldn’t deal with it. I found it very difficult to watch. But I loved playing Sam Tyler and I loved working with Phil. But, you know, I work with Phil every 10 minutes, so I’m not going to miss that.”

(Source: menmedia.co.uk)

I just finished rewatching Life on Mars

thesermyshoes:

In the finale, when Sam records his experiences in 1973, a woman comes up and says something to the effect of, “You wanted me to take something down to the psychology department?” to which Sam answers, “Yeah, there’s an officer down there; she’s studying officers that have been though a traumatic experience.” OMG HE’S TALKING ABOUT ALEX! Does this mean they were planing A2A while they were still working on LoM?

Yes, cos John Simm only wanted to do two series of Life on Mars, and a sequel was planned with a new DI. The female colleague studying officers who had undergone trauma (it was before the character Alex Drake was created) is the link to the sequel.

ETA: Found a quote from Ashley Pharoah in Broadcast Magazine Jan 2008.

Pharoah admits: “Given the concept was one that existed in the now dead lead character’s head, we didn’t hold much hope. But one afternoon we came up with the idea of having a female police psychiatrist (sic) who had treated Sam and so was familiar with the key characters. With a female DCI (sic) we realised we would have a fresh show — what better way to wrong-foot Gene than put a woman in the mix?”

fromswithlove:

‘…Stay.’

‘…Go.’

(Source: agentfassbender)