(S02E01) Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt, and the rest of the Life on Mars gang returned for the first episode of eight in the new (and final) series -- and with a bit of a bang too.

Paying some due deference to viewers who may not have caught the first series, this season premiere was peppered with recap elements designed to bring everyone up to speed (along with the standard cold open).

Sam Tyler is a police detective from Manchester in the UK in the year 2006. He suffers a nasty car accident, and wakes up in 1973.

Is he in a coma? Has he travelled back in time? Or is he just plain mad?

Either way, it's like he's landed on a different planet, and he has to make the most of things until he finds his way back to the future.

Warning: spoilers after the jump.

The second (and final) series of Life on Mars starts on Monday, with John Simm returning as time-travelling detective Sam Tyler, who finds himself stuck in the 1970s, solving crime with modern police methods and trying to find a way back to 2006.

The BBC ONE trailers have been running for the past week, making use of a 1970s-style voice over, blue-hued segments from the forthcoming series, and the 'BBC Colour' logo -- from when BBC shows were differentiated in quality by being either plain old 'BBC' (ie. black and white) or 'BBC Colour' (ie. in glorious eye-popping reds and blues).

For some reason, ideas in Hollywood come in pairs. Two asteroid movies. Two volcano movies. Two "backstage at SNL" shows. Here's another interesting two-fer I spotted when reading the latest casting reports. Both Fox and NBC have comedies in the works that will feature wheelchair-bound leads. Playing Chicken, Fox's pilot, will star Broadway baby Norbert Leo Butz as a "loudmouthed conservative" who is forced to move in with his lefty brother after an accident leaves him disabled. NBC's comedy I'm With Stupid focuses on two guys living in an assisted living facility. Christopher Thornton (pictured), who co-stars with Kevin Daniels in I'm With Stupid, was paralyzed from the waist down after a rock-climbing accident in 1992.

The BBC Trust is moving forward with a new plan to allow viewers to download and save BBC programs from the last seven days for up to thirty days on their computers.

The BBC is funded by a fee paid by television owners in the UK. Certain revisions have been made to the new plan to make sure BBC's entry into the world of on-demand TV doesn't negatively affect the market or provide unfair competition for other broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4 and BSkyB which have also begun to dabble in on-demand services.

Some changes to the initial proposal have already been made, such as reducing the amount of time allowed to keep a program from thirteen weeks to thirty days, and to disallow downloading long-running and continuing shows such as Top Gear and EastEnders. A final decision for the new iPlayer service will be made sometime before May 2, 2007.

[via Digg]

The promos for the second, and final series of Life on Mars have started sprouting up across the UK.

I spotted a bus stop ad earlier tonight in the west end of Glasgow, designed in a typically 1970s fashion -- replete with the late 1970s BBC logo -- promising the return of this excellent retro-cop time-travelling show on Tuesday 13 February on BBC ONE in the UK.

John Simm will return as detective inspector Sam Tyler, who finds himself still stuck in 1973, following a car accident (the title of the show comes from the last tune he was listening to on his iPod before his accident -- David Bowie's Life on Mars).

Before I begin, let me just say that I'm writing about this item with a huge lump of salt next to me. Given the source and the nature of the story, it's the only way for me to take it. But as a conversation-starter, it's priceless:

Contact Music -- who hasn't exactly been a great source in the past -- is reporting that the producers of Doctor Who want to move the show to Hollywood for one episode, just to have Britney Spears play a guest role in it. The role will be a "sex-mad" alien clone; I think a "baby-mad" trailer drone would be a better fit, but that's just me. Anyway, executive producer Russell T. Davies is a huge fan of the pop tart and would love to somehow include her in the show. "I'm not sure she'll come to Cardiff where the show is shot so I'm nagging the BBC to fund a Hollywood special," Davies tells the site.

As those of you who have been following the story of his recovery know, Richard Hammond, co-host of popular British automotive show Top Gear, suffered serious brain injuries from a 288mph jet car crash last September. Hammond returned to Top Gear this past Sunday where it's reported he received a "hero's welcome" from fans. Top Gear aired footage of crash, which you can see online via the BBC.

Hammond, who watched the footage alongside co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May, said that he has no recollection of the crash. "The only difference between me now, and before the crash, is I like celery now." Investigators are still reviewing the safety precautions taken by the show. Top Gear, which appears on BBC2, aired briefly in the United States on the Discovery Channel.

Of course, this is an entire new usage of the word "reality." You know, the kind of reality where kids have magical powers and can fly around on broomsticks? My dictionary needs some serious updating. Apparently a new series coming to the BBC entitled The Sorcerer's Apprentice (no, we aren't kidding) will enroll fourteen kids into a Hogwarts-esque school where they "will be schooled in magic history and folklore, told the latin terms for casting spells, and taught how to look after resident magic animals. As their knowledge and skills progress they will also be taught the art of illusion."

Apparently they'll basically be taught magic by lesser known David Copperfields and Lance Burtons, thereby making this potentially one of the greatest must see train wreck shows in television history. Yes, kids are adorable, but watching them try to learn sleight of hand so they don't get voted off a TV show? Ouch-tastic. Stay tuned for more as the secrets are revealed. You might also brace yourself for a lot of magical puns, because I just can't help myself.

As much as the title sounds like flamebait, I assure you it isn't. I'm actually 100%, from the bottom of my heart, curious as to what everyone else thinks.

You see, when I read the AV Club's interview with Ricky this week, I really didn't know how I felt about it. On the one hand, you have a groundbreaking comedian trying to set the bar a little higher for himself. On the other you have a pompous windbag. I've been flip-flopping between the two.

As I may have mentioned here once or twice, I was a huge fan of the British version of The Office. No matter what the US version accomplishes or how good it gets, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the vision Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had of the average dead-boring workplace and the relationships that are developed there.

So when I was sent a preview copy of the first season of the pair's follow-up effort, Extras (out Tuesday), I was intrigued but wary: after such a successful debut, the sophomore effort more often than not disappoints. Also, all the reviews of the show I had read during its BBC and HBO runs (I have neither channel) were of the mixed-to-positive variety. So... is it worth buying, renting, or neither? I'll let you know after the jump.

(S03E01) I have been looking forward to this Special for a very long time and, I'm sorry to say, I was a little bit disappointed. Although many questions were answered, I didn't think there was enough substance to justify an hour and a half of television. The whole thing could have wrapped up very neatly in about thirty minutes, I think.

(S01E13) You know that little voice in your head which sometimes tells you not to do things, or sometimes warns you of impending danger?

Sure you do.

Some people envisage it as two little smaller versions of themselves, like a little devil and an angel, battling for your conscience and advising you for or against certain situations.

Well, I genuinely wish I'd listened to mine when it warned me off Robin Hood several months ago.

(S01E12 / S01E13) I really only have one minor complaint about this end-of-season double-bill of Torchwood, and it's barely worth mentioning.

For a debut season of a large budget sci-fi show on the BBC, scheduled late in a poor slot on a digital channel with limited viewers and decidedly adult themes, strong language and graphic violence, this show succeeded where so many others fail miserably.

And it achieved its success by giving viewers a taste of something usually only witnessed in much higher-profile shows, such as its big sister show Doctor Who; originality.

(S01E11) The first rule of Torchwood is, you do not talk about Torchwood.

The second rule of Torchwood is, you should steal plots from other movies and TV shows, but do so in such a way that it feels compelling and relatively original.

The third rule of Torchwood is, make sure you throw something in at the very end which knocks everything out of balance and makes the show even more of an interesting prospect for the series finale.

(S01E12) All things being right, this is an episode of Robin Hood which should have arrived about four episodes ago, bringing about some much-needed dramatic action to the storyline and giving the audience an emotional hurdle before the grand finale.

I've been quite critical of this show, despite the odd nugget here and there -- mostly because of the repetitive plots and corny endings -- but this first part of two (before the series ends next week) ventured into that bleak, cliff-hanger territory we often see in shows like 24, Lost and Battlestar Galactica but rarely sniff in something like Robin Hood.