“Life on Mars” cannot possibly go wrong. Just picture a nowadays ordinary scene. Traffic jams, crime fighters, packed streets, accidents and music. Yes, music. However, things become less normal if you get hit by a car and wake up in another era. That is a whole different story lived by a nowadays hero, Sam Tyler.

ABC’s remake of the British series “Life on Mars” is startlingly good, as its pilot comes up to the supercilious potential of the original and Irish actor Jason O’Mara, the only cast member who also played in the BBC series, does a great job with taking his lead character on the mysterious back-in-time trip.

It’s 2008 and Sam Tyler is a New York detective on the trail of a serial killer who kidnapped his cop girlfriend Maya (Lisa Bonet). However, he suddenly gets hit by a car while Davie Bowie is singing his “Life on Mars” tune, and wakes up decades earlier. A ‘70s-like city welcomes its new resident with a bunch of sing-with-me commercials, Vietnam War headlines and the freshly built World Trade Center towers.

Is Sam in a coma or is he in hell (it does not look like heaven to me)? Is this image of 1973 a mere figment of his imagination or was his 2008 life a plain hallucination?

He’s still a detective, all right, but he is not at all familiar with the grounds. His new partners, including Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel), Detective Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli) and Detective Chris Skelton (Jonathan Murphy), find him very odd, especially when he begins reeling off gobbledygook about cell phones and ultra-modern forensic procedures. Sam’s greatest gaffe nevertheless is to show respect to female officer Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol) and treat her as an equal.

But what’s really happening?

The 1973 cop group will solve various crimes and Sam’s 2008 experience with forensics will prove to be of great use, while the show will let slip at a snail’s pace the true reason behind Sam’s time transfer, as a continuing story line. Sam feels like a fish out of water and the “Life on Mars” writers will clear up all of the crankiness of his position to eventually offer viewers rock-solid answers.

Tonight’s episode goes all-out to confuse us and suggest that Sam is in a coma and the whole ‘70s thing is but a dream. Moreover, as he is watching a black and white show in 1973, Sam catches a glimpse of a seeming doctor who looks Sam in the eye with worry, as if he were an unconscious patient in a hospital. Sam also takes into account that he might have simply gone crazy, or that he might have been stuck in a sort of therapy-stimulated nightmare. His angry outbursts even include telling people on the streets, “You’re just a symbol of my anger, or a metaphor of my inability to commit.”

The dusty walls of time traveling sure hide something big and thrilling and if “Life on Mars” manages to draw some loyal viewers, its success is guaranteed.