9 TV Shows That Wrapped Up In Ridiculously Bizarre Ways

6. Life On Mars (US)

America has a hit or miss track record when it comes to remaking foreign media. Sadly, Life On Mars is one of the misses, getting cancelled after one season and being forgotten except for how weird its ending was. In both versions, Sam Tyler, a detective in either 2008 (in the US version) or 2006, gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. In both cases, the mystery is whether Sam went back in time, died, or was in a coma. The main difference between the two shows (beyond quality) is that the US version decided to pick "none of the above" as the answer and replaced the original show's ending with one of their own making. Instead of something smarter, they revealed that Sam Tyler is an astronaut on a mission to Mars in 2035, having his mind stimulated by a virtual reality simulator that glitched and took him from 2008 to 1973. Unlike some of the others, it's pretty clear what happened here: someone suggested changing ending and making the ending relate to Mars to avoid people figuring out the ending from the UK version's Wikipedia page and to make the title a bit more sensible to people who didn't know about David Bowie's song Life On Mars. Unfortunately, what seemed like a good idea in the writers' room didn't work so well and probably demolished what little good will the US version had with viewers.