VID REC: Life on Mars - "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better"

[jantalaimon.livejournal.com]

Vidder: culf
Musical Artist: John Barrowman + Ruthie Henshall (Irving Berlin)
Pairing: None
Vidder on LJ: Still culf!
Vidder's Website: None.
Why this vid kicks ass: A long time ago in a kingdom far, far away, the US adaptation of Life on Mars was just a rumour. AND THEN someone leaked the unaired pilot for the US version on teh intarwebs, and all hell broke loose. Me, I love Colm Meaney, but even he couldn't save it. The thing that was most unbelievable about it was that the actor recruited to play US-version Sam Tyler was one Jason O'Mara...and in that unaired pilot, he seriously could not act his way out of a paper bag. It was AWFUL. Simply, eye-gougingly awful.

Apparently the people at ABC didn't like it, either. The whole thing was scrapped, including most of the cast---except O'Mara. They even changed locations from their original pilot version set in LA, and moved it to New York City for the series proper. And they changed years! The unaired pilot was going to take place in 1972, but the US version now seen on ABC on a weekly basis in the US is set in 1973. To be fair, I did give the US version a shot at not actively sucking and watched the first episode of the NYC version. It wasn't nearly as bad as the LA pilot, thankfully, but since it relied so heavily on the script of the original, I couldn't find a reason to want to watch it, particularly since I find O'Mara's acting to be roughly on par with Hayden Christensen.

ANYWAY, now that the long backstory is out of the way---this vid? After LoM fandom was in a tizzy when the LA-based unaired US pilot came out, culf snarked quite wonderfully and cleverly about the differences between the two Sams. Her editing is brilliant, and I believe will illustrate quite handily just why most of us were fairly disgusted with that pilot. :)

Anything Sam Can Do, Sam Can Do Better

[ETA: Fixed the artist; wrong version listed earlier. Sorry! :)]