Shows Like Life on Mars
If you loved Life on Mars's Mystery and Drama storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
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Life on Mars
A detective chief inspector from 2006 is investigating a serial killer when he is knocked over by a speeding car. Waking up, he finds himself mysteriously transported back in time to 1973. Initially struggling to come to terms with his situation, he has to come to terms with the old-fashioned technology and attitude of the day, while figuring out how he came to be trapped in the past.
Frequency
Detective Raimy Sullivan is stunned when a voice suddenly crackles through her father’s old, long-broken ham radio – it’s Frank Sullivan, somehow transmitting over the airwaves and through the decades from 1996. Separated by twenty years, father and daughter have reunited on a frequency only they can hear, but can they rewrite the story of their lives without risking everyone they love?
Continuum
The series centers on the conflict between a group of rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC, in 2012, and a police officer who accidentally accompanies them. In spite of being many years early, the rebel group decides to continue its violent campaign to stop corporations of the future from replacing governments, while the police officer endeavours to stop them without revealing to anyone that she and the rebels are from the future.
Dalgliesh
A recent widower and acclaimed poet, enigmatic Inspector Adam Dalgliesh employs his exceptional empathy and insight to plumb the darker depths of the human psyche while investigating complex crimes in 1970s England.
Baretta
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title role.
Bodies
One victim, found dead on a London street. Four detectives, in four different time periods, must solve the mystery to protect Britain's future.
Grimm
After Portland homicide detective Nick Burkhardt discovers he's descended from an elite line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms," he increasingly finds his responsibilities as a detective at odds with his new responsibilities as a Grimm.
21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street revolves around a group of young cops who would use their youthful appearance to go undercover and solve crimes involving teenagers and young adults.
More Shows Like Life on Mars
New York Undercover
New York Undercover is an American police drama The series stars Detective J.C. Williams and Detective Eddie Torres, two undercover detectives in New York City's Fourth Precinct who were assigned to investigate various crimes and gang-related cases.
Ashes to Ashes
Crime drama series featuring Life On Mars' DCI Gene Hunt. After being shot in 2008, DI Alex Drake lands in 1981, where she finds herself in familiar company.
Barnaby Jones
Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. The show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement. William Conrad guest starred as Frank Cannon of Cannon on the first episode of Barnaby Jones, "Requiem for a Son" and the two series had a two-part crossover episode in 1975, "The Deadly Conspiracy".
Reacher
Jack Reacher, a veteran military police investigator, has just recently entered civilian life. Reacher is a drifter, carrying no phone and the barest of essentials as he travels the country and explores the nation he once served.
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew makes plans to leave her hometown for college, but finds herself drawn into a supernatural murder mystery instead.
S.W.A.T.
A Los Angeles S.W.A.T. sergeant is assigned to lead a highly skilled unit in the community where he grew up. Torn between loyalty to the streets, where the cops are sometimes the enemy, and allegiance to his brothers in blue, he strategically straddles the two worlds.
Crime Story
The hard-boiled saga of hair-trigger cop Lieutenant Mike Torello and his obsessive pursuit of ruthless gangster Ray Luca.
Inspector George Gently
Crime drama set in the 1960s about an old-school detective trying to come to terms with a time when the lines between the police and criminals have become blurred.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow
When heroes alone are not enough ... the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat — one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself. Can this ragtag team defeat an immortal threat unlike anything they have ever known?
Professor T
Professor Jasper Tempest, a genius Cambridge University criminologist with OCD and an overbearing mother, advises the police. British version of the Belgian crime drama of the same name.
Torchwood
The exploits of a team of people whose job is to investigate the unusual, the strange and the extraterrestrial.
Seven Days
"Ever wish you could live your last week all over again? Well, my name's Frank B. Parker, and I do it all the time. I work for a secret government project experimenting in time travel. When things really get screwed up, I'm the guinea pig they send back to take care of it. The catch is, I can only go back 7 days."
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Life on Mars (2008): Mystery and Drama themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Life on Mars.
See full details for Life on Mars (2008)