i've been enjoying the beeb's latest cop show life on mars, the basic premise of which it is that a modern day policeman gets hit by a car and goes back in time to 1973, where he is astonished by un-pc attitudes, lack of forensics and primitive technology.
it's a terrific watch - funny, weird, exciting and it's got a good soundtrack. and it does make you think about life back then. without mobiles and ipods and, heck, computers that fit into a space smaller than a room. we're talking pre-internet too. i suppose the target demographic (yeah, this is how i talk, now i work in tv) is people who never saw the 1970s, or at least don't remember it too clearly, but my parents are quite keen on it too, though in a different way. they worked in pre-computer offices, when you had to write everything by hand and then get it typed up. which is, really, a world away from 2006. *
but then today i got the chance to experience life in the seventies, when we had a spectacular power cut at work. the lights went off at 1.15, and didn't come back on... well, they did come back on, but not before they'd evacuated the building as it was getting too dark. so there was a whole afternoon (ok, more like a couple of hours, cos i had my lunch and we did get to go home early) where we worked like it was 1973. pens on paper. no wikipedia for fact checking purposes (not that i use it... honest). seriously, life without backspace sux0rs.
*incidentally, i am pronoucing this year twenty-oh-six, like charlotte green, (don't click that link if you want all your preconceptions ruined forever). it sounds so much more like the future.
