It took seven years for Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham to persuade anybody in TV land to commission Life on Mars. “We had a lot of meetings where everyone stared at their shoes while we pitched,” Pharoah recalls. In the two years since the series went on air, however, British television drama has changed – and Pharoah believes Life on Mars can take some credit for introducing high-concept, imaginative shows that play with a savvy audience where before all was social realism.

This year, for instance, ITV1 has introduced the postmodern tomfoolery of Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach, the former a sitcom about cynical, adrenaline-pumped TV executives making a soap, the latter the soap itself, shown immediately afterwards. This spring, ITV1 continues to flirt with the kind of ideas developed by 1970s playwrights with Rock Rivals, a drama based on X Factor/Pop Idol shows. The producers have filmed two endings; in reality-television style, the audience can vote for the ending they want to see.

Indeed, 2008 is a strong year for imagination on the channel, with April’s Lost in Austen seeing Jemima Rooper as a big Pride and Prejudice fan who steps into the pages of her favourite book and finds she has replaced her favourite heroine. There’s also Frankenstein, updated to the present day, with Helen McCrory as a female scientist employing genetic engineering to help her congenitally ill son, only to . .. well, create a monster.

On Channel 4, March sees the documentary producer Nick Broomfield messing with the documentary and drama genres in Battle for Haditha. Broomfield filmed his version of the 2005 attack by US marines of Kilo company on the Iraqi town – which left 24 civilians dead – using former marines, insurgents and Iraqi exiles to improvise the script, based on their own experience.

Meanwhile, the BBC has taken a grimy flat-share drama and added a touch of fantasy by making the three buddies a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. “It’s actually a serious piece,” explains Andrea Riseborough, who plays the ghost. “Effectively, the vampire is a drug addict, the werewolf has a disease and the ghost is agoraphobic.”

Pharoah and Graham have another series on air, Bonekickers, after Easter. Described by Pharoah as a cross between Indiana Jones and Hustle, it pits a team of young, sexy archeologists against buried mysteries like a fragment of the true cross under a hospital in Bath. Pharoah argues that Doctor Who and American shows such as Lost helped to persuade schedulers the public was ready for unconventional mainstream television. Now America is returning the compliment by remaking Life on Mars, with the producer David E Kelley setting the show in 1970s LA, against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. As yet, the Gene Hunt character has not been cast.

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