Life On Mars takes great leap forward... to 1990s China

POLICE drama Life On Mars is to be remade for a Chinese audience. And the Seventies music, dodgy fashions and even dodgier hairstyles are out – for the new series will be set in Beijing in the early 1990s.

China’s Phoenix Entertainment Group has bought the rights to shoot a Mandarin version of the adventures of a time-travelling detective. The series, expected to air on Chinese TV next year, will show a policeman waking up after a near-fatal accident to discover he has travelled back in time, to a period when China was beginning to open up to the West and experiencing rapid change.

The original 16-part BBC version, shown in 2006 and 2007, starred John Simm and Philip Glenister, and was set in Manchester in 197 . It spawned a sequel, Ashes To Ashes, starring Keeley Hawes, which was set in the Eighties.

The Mandarin version will not be its first foreign makeover.

Life On Mars has previously been remade for South Korea – audiences were transported back to 1987 as Seoul was preparing to host the Olympics – the US, the Czech Republic, Russia and Spain. The BBC has had considerable success with Chinese audiences since 2002, when Teletubbies became one of the first children’s shows to air on China’s state-run channel.

More recently Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was praised by the People’s Daily state newspaper as ‘exquisite’, with Sherlock Holmes being nicknamed ‘Curly Fu’ by viewers.