Life On Mars 라이프 온 마스 [OCN]

The 2018 16-episode Life on Mars is a korean remake/adaption of the BBC series broadcasted more than a decade ago. 

With Park Sung-woong and Jung Kyung-ho in the lead roles, Life on Mars depicts a detective who seemingly time-travelled from 2018 to 1988 after he was shot in the head while pursuing a suspect.  Well, since this is adapted from a 2007 BBC series, obviously there is no time travel ala korean dramas.  What happened was Jung Kyung-ho's character constantly questioning if he was dreaming and seeing images that others could not see.  While solving cases in 1988 as a detective, Jung's character kept trying to return to 2018.  In the 2nd last episode, Jung's character did wake up in 2018 - which indicated that he was actually in a coma and his life in 1988 happened in his subconscious.  Eventually, Jung's character chose to "return" to 1988 in a rather bizzare manner, which made for a rather freaky last episode, especially when Jung's character's mother told him that she would stand by his decision and only wanted him to be happy.  There seemed to be a lot of hidden meanings when the characters referring to when they say "go home".

The twist in the plot is initially difficult to catch and understand, and it took me another 16 hours to re-watch the drama to understand what had happened.

Since the korean Life on Mars was adapted from a ready script, the plot and character build-up were much more coherent than the usual korean dramas that were shot, edited and broadcast while the screenplay was still being developed, resulting in quite a fair bit of gaps in terms of logic and reality.  Instead of travelling from 2006 to 1973 as in the original BBC series, the OCN series had Jung's character travelled from 2018 to 1988, when the Seoul Olympics was held, providing a backdrop of trying to solve cases when many police resources were diverted to the Olympics.  The crimes in the korean version were also adapted from unsolved real crime(s).  I suppose many of the outdoor scenes were built sets, and it was interesting to "see" Korea in 1988.  I wonder how realistic the depiction was.  Police brutality seemed commonplace in 1988, as Jung's character tried to bring forth more humane methods of interrogating suspects, which also rubbed off the youngest detective in the team.

Park Sung-woong and Jung had great chemistry in this series, and I was attracted to watch this after partially watching the 2019 When The Devil Calls Your Name, an adaption of Goethe's Faust that both acted in.  I wasn't able to finish watching When The Devil Calls Your Name despite the great chemistry that Park and Jung displayed, as the storyline of Jung's character with the female lead became annoyingly long-winded.