Life just got infinitely more complex for Detective Sam Tyler.

Sam's been searching for a serial killer while working out a relationship with fellow cop Maya (Lisa Bonet). In short, nothing out of the ordinary for a New York City police detective. Then he gets run down by a speeding car.

All in 2008.

Suddenly, Sam (Jason O'Mara) wakes up in 1973 wearing a wide-collared shirt and too-tight pants, with an eight-track tape in his orange muscle car playing the same David Bowie tune, "Life on Mars," that he was listening to in his Jeep right before he stepped out into the street and got whacked.

He still has a detective shield that says he's a New York cop. So at least he has a job, and a place to flop thanks to the department giving him a free apartment because he has transferred from another cop shop. But he's surrounded by hippies, neanderthal cops and a culture as foreign to him as life on Mars.

Yes, it's going to take Sam a little bit of time to acclimate.

O'Mara dominates Life on Mars at 10 p.m. Thursday on ABC, and his portrait of a man who doesn't know if he's in a coma, insane or a time traveler is near-perfect and totally mesmerizing. This series started out with every red flag in the TV world, from being an adaptation of a popular British series, to the fact that original producer David E. Kelley left the project in its early stages.

But with O'Mara taking the lead, and two former Alias producers at the helm, this ship cruises right along.

In the premiere, Sam frequently hears voices that seem to be coming from a hospital room and talking about his near-vegetative state. The doctors ponder if they should pull the plug on him. He also sees people from that alternate reality through his television set.

No, this isn't just another procedural drama, although cop show fans will find plenty to like in this throwback to the days of Starsky and Hutch. There's a lot of music, and Sweet's "Little Willy" makes a satisfying, if unlikely, background tune to a police chase.

Sam's slammed into an alien world, where his only confidante is a woman cop Annie (Gretchen Mol) trying to make her way in a profession resistant to the intrusion of anyone with a Y chromosome, much less anyone who believes that a black man might one day be the top runner in a race for the presidency.

Civil Rights mean little in this world. But the times, they are a-changing. While Lieutenant Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) might still think the easiest way of getting to the truth is with his fists, other officers like rookie Chris Skelton (Jonathan Murphy) are slightly more open to trying new techniques. Former Soprano Michael Imperioli co-stars as the politically incorrect detective Ray Carling, who always has Sam's back.

Meanwhile, Sam's not only trying to cope in this retro world, he's also trying to get back to his life with Maya while forming a tangled attachment to Annie.

Anyone familiar with the British version knows that it ends with Sam emerging from a coma and taking drastic steps when the world he wakes up in isn't exactly how he remembered it.

It's like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, wanting to get home so badly and then discovering she made a horrible mistake leaving the wonderful world of magicians and munchkins.

American producer Josh Appelbaum says he and producing partner Andre Nemec talked to the British creators and changed it.

"Doing, hopefully, a long-running series where you know the whole thing is a dream felt unsatisfying," Applebaum says. "So with their permission, we are changing the mythology and each week we'll be deepening that mystery as to what's going on with him."

The series will be about solving crimes, living in this 1970s world, and ultimately trying to figure out what is going on with Sam and why he has been sent back in time.

And we're ready to take that ride with Sam.

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