1973

Last night I was watching pieces of Life on Mars between flipping channels.

I love time travel. If there is a time travel theme, I'm there.

So the first few times the show aired, I eagerly watched it. And I appreciated the commitment of all the stars (Gretchen Mol, Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli) involved in the series.

But I just couldn't get interested.

It may be because of all the brown. I mean, the show is really brown.

Sepia seems to be the tint of choice for camera lenses filming scenes set in the '70s, just as black and white represents the '50s. We tv viewers understand the camera's transition cues and accept the color/time correlations.

The brown is probably a pretty accurate portrayal.

I was a child at the time, but I remember the clothes of the '70s being mostly earthtones of tan and brown. Cars came in various hues of tan and brown.

And interior decoration followed all the subtle variations of the same theme: brown shag carpet which coordinated nicely with the brown shades in the plaid upholstery and tan draperies.

On Mars we also get plenty of reminders of the violence, discrimination, crude biases, bad hairstyles, and awful clothes...

Watching the show last night I realized:

If my only destination choice for time travel was the year 1973, I'd probably stay home.

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