List of Life on Mars characters
Ted Bannister (John Henshaw) appeared in episode three as a trade union organiser who is fighting to keep the factory where he works in business, despite its probable closure.
Later it transpires that the dead man was killed by faulty machinery, and Ted concealed the circumstances of the death to prop up the factory's reputation.
Later in the episode, Ted's son Derek (Andrew Knott) is arrested for armed robbery, after organising a payroll snatch at the factory.
In a time of social upheaval and women being treated as inferiors to men, Phyllis's no-nonsense attitude earns respect with the male fraternity because they know that, whatever rank they are, she won't tolerate their disrespect.
[1] Richard "Dicky Fingers" Hands (Steve Evets) appeared in episode two of the second series and is introduced when Chris, Ray and Sam are sent to escort him from prison back to Manchester for questioning.
The robbery seems to be going smoothly (Johns is unaware the train's staff are members of CID) but then Sam's radio goes off giving them up as police officers.
Billy Kemble (Kevin Knapman) is arrested during episode seven for flashing his genitals in public and is investigated on suspected drug dealing.
DCI Gene Hunt covers up the death to save all concerned from certain dismissal, but temporarily demotes Carling to Detective Constable, stating that the incident was "shameful" and that it was never to be repeated.
However, Litton's methods threaten Sam's and his own life, when Gene kicks him in the stomach and drops him out of the fire zone, proceeding to take a bullet which was blocked by one of his many hip flasks.
It later transpires that he planted bombs around Manchester, thought to be placed by the Irish Republican Army, to distract the police while he broke into a bank.
In the final year of the sequel series, Ashes to Ashes, Nelson's ghostly voice can be heard briefly in 1983 to DI Ray Carling, DC Chris Skelton and WPC Shaz Granger; Ray cannot quite place the voice, and Shaz never knew Nelson, but Chris recognises it and tells the other two.
Still affecting the accent, he is an Odin or Saint Peter type figure who welcomes Ray, Chris, Shaz, and finally DI Alex Drake into a sort of policemen's Valhala or heaven: an eternal pub.
During episode 7 of the first series, DI Sam Tyler gives him a tape recording, proving that DS Ray Carling forced a prisoner to eat cocaine while in custody in the hope that it would get results out of him.
Rathbone carelessly destroys the tape in front of Tyler without even bothering to hear its contents, satisfied that CID dealt with the matter internally and that there is no need for it to be taken further.
Donald Sykes (Jack Deam) appears in episode eight of the second series, as a local criminal who is involved in a plot to rob a train with Leslie Johns.
Sykes only gives up the plot after DCI Gene Hunt and DS Ray Carling savagely beat him up in the interrogation room.
At the series finale, she is seen running down a street with other children: Turning to camera, she reaches to switch off the TV, and the image disappears as in an old television set.
In an interview with the Radio Times, Matthew Graham revealed the Test Card girl is constantly teasing and torturing Sam because she represents the devil in him.
Woolf is later revealed to be heavily corrupt, having masterminded a bank robbery to gain enough money to live out his last years before he dies of terminal cancer.
Woolf planned to frame local gangster Arnold Malone for the robbery and had Dicky Fingers sprung from police escort for it.
During the stand-off, Woolf is shot in the leg by Hunt and is subsequently held prisoner by an angry, betrayed DC Glenn Fletcher.
Detective Inspector Alexandra "Alex" Drake (née Price) (unseen, subsequently portrayed by Keeley Hawes) is a police psychologist in London to whom DCI Sam Tyler posts debriefing tapes concerning his traumatic injury and the elaborate 1973 world he visited in his coma.
As the first black officer in the division, he experiences racist jokes and bullying from DS Ray Carling, to which Fletcher responds by agreeing with and making light of the racism.
[6] The first black person to hold the rank of Deputy Chief Constable in the Greater Manchester Police, he dies suddenly of a heart attack at his Chorlton home in 2006 at the age of 52, while Sam is in a coma.
Frank Morgan was the name of the actor who played both Professor Marvel and the Wizard in that production, and Life on Mars included frequent allusions to the film.
The manner in which he lays out his pens, notepad, inter alia, at the start of his interrogation of Gene echos Sam's actions in 2006 in episode 1.1.
When Sam runs into the tunnel during the robbery, however, Morgan informs him that there will be no armed response and he is cleaning house by letting Gene, DS Ray Carling, and DCs Chris Skelton and Annie Cartwright be killed.
In the US version, Frank Morgan is an FBI agent sent to the 125th Detective Squad to investigate an Irish gangster's murder and tries to frame Det.
Investigating the crime is DI Sam Tyler who, unlike their contemporaries, does not look down upon Leslie's relationship with an Ugandan Asian immigrant, as he had loved the daughter of one himself.
With Deepak dead, Leslie intends to abort their child but is talked out of doing so by Sam who, in a predestination paradox, inspires her to name her baby Maya.
