Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh have received the green light for their new supernatural drama, The Living and the Dead.

Co-produced by BBC Wales and BBC America in association with Monastic Productions for BBC One, the six-episode drama series takes place in Somerset, England in 1888 and explores a land and a community on the edge of monumental change and on the hinge between ancient traditional ways and an industrial, scientific future in a land of ghosts and myths, poltergeists and demons. At the heart of the community is Nathan Appleby, a reluctant farmer obsessed with proving the existence of the afterlife.

Pharoah and Graham commented in a joint statement: “We are as excited about this show as anything since Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes — we want it to be moving, tender, sensual … and very, very scary.”