It's no wonder the terrifically imaginative Life on Mars has captured David E. Kelley's attention. Though set on the gritty streets of Manchester, England, the show is out of this world.

The veteran producer (The Practice, Boston Legal) is developing a series for ABC based on this fanciful British crime drama, beginning its second and final season, about a modern police detective who is hit by a car and somehow awakens decades earlier in 1973. Think of it as Journeyman done well.

Poor, disoriented Sam Tyler (John Simm) is caught in a wild limbo. While solving crimes in the '70s with a bumbling crew unschooled in CSI-era forensics, Tyler keeps receiving hallucinatory signals from his present-day existence. He's becoming convinced that he's trapped in a coma — kind of like Tony Soprano in his post-gunshot "Kevin Finnerty" phase — as he frantically seeks a way back to his post-millennium life.

Mars is an entertaining collision of bare-knuckled police-procedural realism and mind-blowing surrealism. The result is as intoxicating as the period soundtrack (the show's title is from a David Bowie song). Mars is laced with raucous humor as Tyler constantly butts heads with his irascible and hard-drinking boss, Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), who has no patience for Tyler's enlightened methods and ethics. "People want the job done. They don't want to know how," Hunt growls.

While Tyler adjusts from a world of iPods and cell phones to 8-tracks and walkie-talkies, he's on an emotional tightrope as his worlds continue to blur. As the new season begins, Tyler confronts a nemesis from his future and finds himself working alongside a rookie who will one day be his mentor. Should he live so long. I can't wait to see what Kelley does with this provocative material.

Life on Mars premieres Tuesday, Dec. 11, at 8 pm/ET, on BBC America.

SIDEBAR: Crowned

Empty lies the head that wears a tiara in the campy and relentlessly silly Crowned, a reality contest for attention-seeking mothers and daughters that's being billed as "the mother of all pageants." This one's a mother, all right.

It's also a bit of a headache, even before one of the contestants begins warming up her soprano screech at 7:15 in the morning.

Tiresomely formulaic, Crowned could still catch on as a very guilty pleasure among the CW's less discriminating reality fans. Judge Shanna Moakler (a former Miss USA, now a reality-TV fixture) insists, "We're celebrating what it means to be a modern beauty," but the show's true spirit is conveyed in fellow judge Carson Kressley's bitchiness.

The first challenge is all about making a strong first impression. Sad to say, my attention strayed long before the first "desashing" ceremony.

Crowned premieres Wednesday, Dec. 12, at 9 pm/ET, on the CW.