When Life on Mars first aired, it felt less like a TV show and more like a collective fever dream for middle-aged Brits. The premise — a copper from the 2000s wakes up in 1973 — shouldn’t have worked. Yet somehow, amid the flares, the casual sexism, and the smoking indoors, it captured something we’d all been quietly missing: clarity.
Gene Hunt wasn’t subtle, but at least you knew where you stood. The world was messy, yes, but it was an honest kind of messy. No buzzwords, no HR departments, no bloody hashtags — just people trying (and often failing) to do the right thing. It was political correctness’s awkward adolescence, back when the boundaries were blurry but the intentions, mostly, weren’t malicious.
If you’ve finished Life on Mars (and Ashes to Ashes, and probably rewatched both), you know the feeling — that particular itch for a story about someone out of their time, navigating a world they don’t belong in, with enough humour and heart to make the whole thing land. I’ve spent the best part of a decade writing books that scratch that itch, and I’m not the only one.
This post is part appreciation, part reading list. First, what made Life on Mars work so well. Then, the books that capture the same spirit — including a couple of my own.
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What Life on Mars Got Right
The genius of Life on Mars wasn’t the time travel. It was the fish-out-of-water tension — a modern man with modern sensibilities dropped into a world that ran on instinct, prejudice, and gut feeling. Sam Tyler knew how policing was supposed to work. Gene Hunt knew how it actually worked. The collision between those two worldviews gave the show its engine.
But what made it last — what keeps people rewatching it twenty years on — is the emotional undertow. Sam wasn’t just stuck in the wrong decade. He was stuck between two versions of himself: the man he’d become and the man he might have been. The 1970s weren’t just a setting; they were a mirror. Every episode asked, quietly, whether the world we’ve built is actually better than the one we left behind — or whether we’ve just swapped one set of problems for another.
The period detail helped, of course. The brown and orange décor. The Cortinas. The gloriously incorrect language. But those were surface pleasures. The reason Life on Mars endures is because it asked questions that don’t have easy answers — about progress, about nostalgia, about whether you can ever really go back — and it trusted the audience to sit with the discomfort.
And then there was Gene Hunt. A man who’d be fired, arrested, and trending on Twitter within fifteen minutes of existing in the modern world. But in 1973, he was the law — or at least his version of it. The show never asked you to agree with him. It just asked you to understand him. That’s a harder trick than it sounds, and most writers don’t pull it off.
Why I Wrote Clement
That’s partly why I wrote Who Sent Clement? — not as fan fiction, but as a spiritual cousin to Life on Mars. Where the show sent a modern man backwards, I sent a 1970s man forwards. Clement is a former gangland fixer who claims he died in 1975 and now appears in the lives of people who need his help, seeking redemption for the things he did in his previous life.
He’s cut from similar cloth to Gene Hunt: foul-mouthed, outdated, politically incorrect, and operating by a moral code that hasn’t been updated since decimalisation. Drop him in modern London and he’s like a dog trying to operate an iPhone. Watching him blunder through a world that’s left him behind is equal parts comedy and tragedy — a mirror to all of us who occasionally wonder when the rules changed and who forgot to tell us.
But beneath the laughs and the chaos, there’s a serious thread — about guilt, redemption, and what it means to make peace with who you were. Life on Mars nailed that balance, and I like to think Clement wades through similar waters. Just with more swearing, worse manners, and double denim.
There are four books in the original Clement series — Who Sent Clement?, Wrong’un, Clawthorn, and Headcase — each following Clement as he enters a different person’s life. He then returns in a new series, the Angel of Camden, starting with Eminence, which drops him in Atlanta with no memory of how he got there. If you’re missing Gene Hunt, Clement is the closest thing in fiction to that same energy — a man from the 1970s who refuses to be tamed by the present.
Books Like Life on Mars
If you loved Life on Mars, you’re looking for a specific combination: a character out of their time, a clash between old and new, humour that doesn’t pull its punches, and an emotional core that sneaks up on you. These books deliver.
Who Sent Clement? — Keith A Pearson
The most direct comparison on this list. Clement is Life on Mars in reverse — a 1970s man in the modern world. He’s a former gangland fixer seeking redemption, paired with a woman whose life is falling apart. Funny, touching, and driven by a character who readers consistently describe as one of the most memorable in British indie fiction. If you want Gene Hunt’s energy in book form, start here. Four books in the original series, plus a new series set in America.
Tuned Out — Keith A Pearson
Where Life on Mars sends a modern man to the 1970s, Tuned Out sends a millennial to 1969. Toby Grant is stripped of his phone, the internet, and every digital comfort — and has to navigate pre-decimal Britain on its own terms. It’s the same fish-out-of-water energy as Life on Mars, but from the opposite direction. Funny, then devastating. The twist ending blindsides almost every reader.
The ’86 Fix — Keith A Pearson
Not a direct Life on Mars comparison, but if what you loved about the show was the 1970s nostalgia and the question of “what would you do differently?”, this scratches the same itch. A middle-aged man travels back to 1986 and tries to fix the mistakes of his youth. It’s funnier and lighter than Life on Mars, but the emotional core — regret, nostalgia, the impossibility of going home — is the same.
The Thursday Murder Club — Richard Osman
Not time travel, but if what you loved about Life on Mars was the unlikely partnership between people who shouldn’t work together but absolutely do, this has the same magic. Four pensioners investigate murders from the comfort of their retirement village. It’s funny, warm, and populated by characters who refuse to behave the way the modern world expects them to. The same spirit of charming defiance that made Gene Hunt work.
11.22.63 — Stephen King
A man travels back to the early 1960s to prevent the Kennedy assassination. The time travel mechanics are similar to Life on Mars — one-way, immersive, no safety net — and the period detail is extraordinary. It’s longer and more ambitious than anything else on this list, but if you want the same feeling of being genuinely lost in another era, King delivers. The love story at its centre is also quietly devastating.
Replay — Ken Grimwood
A man dies in 1988 and wakes up in 1963 as his eighteen-year-old self. He lives his life again, dies again, wakes up again. It’s the same existential dread that powered Life on Mars — the question of whether you’re trapped in a loop and whether the choices you make actually matter. Grimwood wrote it in 1986 and it still feels ahead of its time. The godfather of regret-fuelled time travel fiction.
The Humans — Matt Haig
An alien takes over a human body and has to navigate modern life while understanding nothing about human behaviour, emotion, or why anyone would voluntarily eat cheese. It’s not time travel, but the fish-out-of-water experience is identical to Sam Tyler’s — someone who looks like they belong but fundamentally doesn’t. It’s funny, philosophical, and unexpectedly moving. If the “outsider looking in” aspect of Life on Mars resonated with you, this will too.
Cassandra in Reverse — Holly Smale
An autistic woman discovers she can rewind time. It’s more literary than Life on Mars and the tone is quite different, but the central question is the same: if you could go back and change things, would the outcome actually be better? Smale writes with wry precision about the gap between how people are perceived and who they actually are — which is, in a different register, exactly what Sam Tyler spent two series figuring out.
FAQ
Are there any books like Life on Mars?
The closest comparison is Who Sent Clement? by Keith A Pearson — a former 1970s gangland fixer dropped into modern London, seeking redemption. It’s Life on Mars in reverse: same era, same fish-out-of-water comedy, same balance of humour and emotional depth. There are four books in the original series and a further two in a follow-up series called Angel of Camden.
What should I watch after Life on Mars?
The direct sequel is Ashes to Ashes, which moves the setting to the 1980s with a new lead character. Beyond that, shows like Heartbeat (gentle 1960s nostalgia), The Sweeney (1970s policing in its rawest form), and Endeavour (period crime with emotional depth) scratch different aspects of the same itch.
Is the Clement series actually like Life on Mars?
In spirit, yes. Clement is a man from the 1970s navigating the modern world — bewildered by technology, baffled by social norms, and prone to solving problems with methods that went out of fashion decades ago. The humour comes from the same place as Gene Hunt’s: a man who refuses to be updated. But Clement has his own mythology — he claims to be dead, and the question of who sent him and why runs beneath the surface of every book.
Do I need to have seen Life on Mars to enjoy the Clement books?
Not at all. The comparison helps explain the tone, but the books stand entirely on their own. Many readers come to Clement without knowing Life on Mars exists and love him just as much.
What if I want something less funny and more emotionally intense?
Try A Page in Your Diary — a man travels back to 1988 to save the woman he once hurt. It has the nostalgic period detail of Life on Mars but the emotional register is darker and more intimate. Or 11.22.63 by Stephen King, which is the heavyweight of the genre.