[Televisionary]

David E. Kelley's US adaptation of hit BBC series (and Televisionary favorite) Life on Mars just got a little more crowded. After locking in series leads Sam Tyler and Annie, to be played by Marlowe 's Jason O'Mara and Veronica Mars ' Rachelle Lefevre, Kelley has finally clinched the pivotal character of Detective Gene Hunt, the surly, violence-prone head of the homicide division. (The Gene Genie in the original Life on Mars was played with aplomb by the preternaturally talented Philip Glenister.) Hunt will be played by veteran Irish actor Colm Meaney, familiar to many as Chief O'Brien on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation . He's appeared in dozens of films including Layer Cake , The Commitments , Claire Dolan , Con Air , The Snapper , and Mystery, Alaska , the latter of which was written by--you guessed it--David E. Kelley himself. Also cast in the drama pilot: Rescue Me 's Lenny Clark. Life in Mars is still in contention for

One of the questions I get asked fairly regularly via email is what ever happened to David E. Kelley's US adaptation of Life on Mars ? Being a huge fan of the original UK Life on Mars , I was fairly underwhelmed by Kelley's script, which did little more than transport the action from 1970s Manchester... to 1970s Los Angeles and slightly Americanize the dialogue. As for the rest, it's all basically the same: Sam Tyler chases serial killer, arrests Colin Raimes, has car accident, wakes up in 1970. Oh, except, this time around Annie is a full-on female detective, rather than a WPC in a skirt. The project was meant originally for fall consideration but when the pilot for Life on Mars --which had only cast Rachelle Lefevre ( Life on a Stick ) as Annie--failed to cast the ever-crucial role of series lead, it was placed on hold until an appropriate Sam Tyler could be cast. Cut several months forward to today, where ABC has announced that it has finally managed to find its lead f

Expect Sam Tyler to travel back in time a little later than originally expected. In an unsurprising move (I've been waiting for weeks for this announcement), ABC has opted to push the US adaptation of drama Life on Mars to midseason, allowing executive producer David E. Kelley more time to, you know, cast the lead actor. (They had only managed so far to cast Rachelle Lefevre as Annie.) "After a thorough search, we still haven't been able to find the right actor for this role," Kelley was quoted as saying. " Life on Mars is a project whose success relies heavily on the strength of its lead actors, and rather than compromise we prefer to keep looking and shoot for midseason." Having read the script earlier this weekend (coincidental, no?), I can't say that I am all that excited by a US adaptation of Life on Mars , a brilliant series about a contemporary police detective on the trail of a serial killer who finds himself, after a car accident involving the