 In the U.S. pilot,
Colm Meaney was cast as Gene Hunt.
| | Life on Mars (US)
adapted by Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg
First episode: 9 Oct 2008
I watched this show when it first came out, but it never engaged me, and somehow the casting seemed off. Not until seven years later did I watch the original U.K. version: Surprise! I was drawn in, partly because the characters appealed to me more, and partly because of a softer sell—still melodramatic, but not often over the top. It goes like this, Spaceman. We live on a rock, there ain’t no rhyme, there ain’t no reason. We live on a rock, just one of many. Hurling around in some big cosmic jumbalaya. Now you wanna get questiony, that’s your prerogative. My ma took me to a loud church every Sunday. She squeezed her eyes shut, she pressed her rosary beads to her lips and she prayed for good things for those she loved. But, cancer took two of her sisters. Her husband couldn’t make a move without a belly full of gin, her youngest son turned to a life of crime, and her oldest, me, is a nasty son of a bitch who can’t get out of third gear without a snarl. So, who was she talking to every Sunday and why wasn’t he answering? I will tell you why, because we live on a rock, just one of many. There ain’t no answers! There’s just this! And all you can really hope to do is to find a couple of people who make the seventy or eighty odd years we get to live on this sweet swinging sphere remotely tolerable.
I gotta take a leak. 
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