A sequel to Life on Mars titled Ashes to Ashes is in production with the action moving to the 1980s.

Life on Mars tells the story of a modern detective, Sam Tyler, played by John Simms, who is struck by a car and ends up in the 1970s. Instead of being part of a modern police department, he is stuck in his own past and strangely working as a DI in a ‘70s police department instead. Is he in a coma, has he gone mad, or has he really jumped back in time?

As a straightforward drama Life on Mars would have made a great gritty detective series, but with elements of fantasy and psychology thrown in, it was one of the most original and entertaining shows to come out of the UK in years.

While the main character Sam Tyler from the original show won’t make an appearance, Philip Glenister, a co-star in the original show returns as DCI Gene Hunt. The new show will star a modern policewoman from the 21st century, a psychological profiler, who is injured trying to rescue her daughter and ends up in 1981.

Ashes to Ashes has already started filming, and should be broadcast in the UK next year. If you haven’t watched the two seasons of the original series, it’s well worth a look.

It's about time someone updated the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story for the 21^st century. Created by Jeffrey Taylor, the BBC's new television fantasy drama Jekyll stars James Nesbitt, best know as the lead in the popular UK television series Cold Feet.

Nesbitt plays Tom Jackman, a modern-day descendant of Dr. Jekyll, who has recently begun his unfortunate transformations. He also plays Dr Jekyll's alter ego Mr Hyde.

Jekyll is more a sequel than an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, with the writers adding the possibility that Tom Jackman may have been cloned from the original Dr Jekyll, and a secret American organisation is tracking his movements.

Unable to control his alter ego, Tom Jackman separates from his wife, locks himself away in a rented apartment, and hires an assistant to manage the transformations. Each personality has its own lifestyle and secrets, which the assistant keeps for both of them.

If it can sustain the momentum and wit of its early episodes, it should be worth the investment.

Jekyll was first broadcast on BBC One on 16 June 2007.

It's no easy thing to do something original with the legend of Robin Hood, and it is perhaps a measure of the scarcity of originality that movie and TV studios keep on doing something with it. Frequently. It's no surprise, of course. When there's nothing original to say, the same old things keep on being repeated. Every five or six years it seems there is another attempt to breathe life into the Robin Hood legend on film, whether in a movie or a TV series, with the results falling neatly into three categories: the Good, the Bad and the very, very - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.