It’s all too easy for those who dismiss U.S. television and the culture as a whole as leftist and immoral to pick and choose (and misinterpret) episodes and scenes that seem to confirm their assumption that the culture is overwhelmingly awful. The ABC TV police/fantasy drama series Life on Mars, for example, provides some tempting apples for pop culture-haters to pluck.

For instance, episode three, "My Maharishi Is Bigger Than Your Maharishi," strained to make some very dubious points. To wit: that homosexuality is more common than most people think (when probably the opposite is true), that turning away from a habit of homosexual behavior is a denial of one’s true self (when it’s equally plausible to suggest that the earlier homosexual behavior was the real denial of the person’s true self, and that sexual behavior is much more a matter of choice than many homosexual activists are willing to admit), and that physical attacks on people strictly for being homosexual are wrong (which of course they are, and which is pretty much universally accepted by our society and is in fact encoded in the laws even though the law already made all such assaults a felony). In addition it characterized most of society as eager to go around beating up homosexuals. That’s false history and truly silly didacticism.

Add to that the episode’s exhibition of fondness for Hinduism, and you have a big invitation for undiscerning opponents of pop culture to point to the show as evidence of an ongoing leftist conspiracy to destroy the nation through cultural promulgation of radical, transformative ideas and values.

The problem is that Life on Mars, like the culture itself, is much more varied and well-intended than the haters are willing to see, much less acknowledge. Several recent episodes provide ample evidence.

For example, in episode five, "Things to Do in New York When You Think You’re Dead," protagonist Sam Tyler, a modern-day New York City policeman who has mysteriously been transported back in time to the 1970s, pursues a Puerto Rican manual laborer named Angel who is accused of killing a nine-year-old black girl, an incident that threatens to spark a race riot whipped up by a radio personality known as Brother Lovebutter.

Also among the antagonists are a sinister group of black gangsters calling themselves the Black Liberation Army. The lack of illusions about black radicals of the time is laudable.

In pursuit of Angel, Sam and Capt. Gene Hunt meet Father Tim, a Catholic priest who displays courage, integrity, trustworthiness, and sound judgment. Spurred on by Brother Lovebutter’s rantings and Angel’s escape from custody, the riots break out as feared. Amid the confusion, Sam encounters a wino who tells him he might already be dead but just not realize it.

Sam then talks with Father Tim, who provides some useful information, but only after a serious effort to help Sam understand why the detective has lost his faith in God, and to suggest to Sam that he is in fact on a quest to find a truth he knows is there but of which he has lost sight.

The story is resolved by the planned, public, redemptive sacrifice of Angel’s life (although it is actually a scheme devised by Gene Hunt to stop the riot, and Angel is not killed). Angel tells Sam that God miraculously sent Sam to save him in answer to Angel’s prayers. The wino turns out to be an angel who takes Keisha’s soul to the next life. He tells Sam that he heard his prayers and came to give Sam a chance to say goodbye to his mentor, a police captain who has died in the present day and with whom Sam has been working during the Angel case.

That night Sam prays, asking God to help him find his way home.

Similarly salutary is the treatment of sensuality and the rock-and-roll lifestyle in episode 10, "Let All the Children Boogie," in which an androgynous, hedonistic rock star based on glam rockers such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan turns out to be quite sensible and smart and a clever practitioner of capitalism.

And in episode 13, "Revenge of Broken Jaw," a case involving bomb threats against the police has a group of student radicals as the villains, led by a smug female college professor who is drawn from ample examples of the time. The professor has led her followers to commit the murders, by bombing, of four police officers whom she was all too eager to believe murdered a student radical a year earlier. The officers were innocent, however, and the professor turns out to be even worse than her nitwit radical students.

Here again the show tells a story in which smug political radicals create terrible harm which is ended only by the hardworking and unappreciated police.

Unfortunately, and perhaps attributable to less salubrious and sensible episodes such as the "My Maharishi" clunker (as well as the general lameness of ABC, which tries so hard to be hip that its programming is largely ridiculous), Life on Mars never really developed a strong audience following and has been canceled. The good news is that ABC is allowing the show to finish its run, which will conclude with an episode resolving the story, explaining how and presumably why Sam was transported back in time, with a possible return home for him.

For all its faults, Life on Mars has done some very good things. A fair evaluation of the show and popular culture as a whole must acknowledge such positive developments.

—S. T. Karnick