The show was conceived in 1998 when screenwriters Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah were sent on a break to Blackpool by production company Kudos to think of new ideas, and it was originally titled 'Ford Granada' after the 1970s car.

The initial concept was for a humorous, pre-watershed programme mocking 1970s styles and attitudes, with comic actor Neil Morrissey envisaged as the lead character, before the BBC rejected the pitch.

The character Sam Tyler was originally to be named Sam Williams, but creator Matthew Graham asked his young daughter for a surname suggestion; she proposed 'Tyler', unknowingly naming him after Doctor Who character Rose Tyler.

Gene Hunt's surname was taken from actor Gareth Hunt.

The show's setting moved geographically during development, originally planned for London, then changed to Leeds, and finally settled on Manchester as part of a BBC initiative to produce more programmes there.

The series is named after David Bowie's song 'Life on Mars?', which plays on an iPod when Sam is hit by a car and on an 8-track tape when he wakes in 1973; producers were initially unsure they could license the song, which would have forced a retitling of the series.

The production team was initially refused permission to use Paul McCartney and Wings' 'Live and Let Die', but after the episode was sent directly to McCartney, his assistant called back to say he loved it and approved its use.

Gene Hunt's nickname 'Gene Genie' references David Bowie's song 'The Jean Genie', used in the fourth episode, while another Bowie track, 'Changes', plays over the closing credits of the second series finale.

Sam's former police division is set in Hyde, a town east of Manchester, as a deliberate nod to Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', hinting that his 1973 self is an alter ego.

The building site where Sam awakens in 1973 features an advertising board for the Mancunian Way motorway, even though the road was actually completed in 1967; writer Matthew Graham confirmed this was a deliberate use of artistic licence.

Two days after the finale aired, the NASUWT teachers' union publicly criticised the show, claiming Gene Hunt's homophobic insults could encourage copycat bullying in schools, prompting the BBC to defend the character as 'extreme and tongue-in-cheek'.

Matthew Graham's claim that two alternate endings had been filmed for the series turned out to be a ruse.