Watching the first episode of the American version of Life on Mars it occured to me that we don't really have an equivalent to Manchester in the public consciousness. Relocating the story to New York makes sense in a conjure up image of gritty city way, but lacks the ability to convey the pecularities of smaller city crime and policing that I think were rather important in the original series. New York is too big of a canvas.
It's what The Wire did with Baltimore, but Baltimore had to be explained to people instead of simply being invoked.
