The BBC drama This City is Ours will return for a second series after attracting more than six million viewers, the broadcaster has confirmed.

Filmed in Liverpool, the eight-episode thriller about the lives and loves of the Phelan family – operating against the backdrop of drug trafficking – has become the corporation’s most-watched new drama this year.

Starring Sean Bean and Julie Graham, it featured Liverpudlian actors James Nelson-Joyce – who has been touted as a potential James Bond replacement – and Jack McMullen.

Creator Stephen Butchard said he had been “blown away by the incredibly positive response”, adding: “I can’t thank the audience enough for their time and emotional investment.”

The series, which chronicles the battle for control over a cocaine-trafficking gang, filmed some scenes in Spain and will be sold to foreign broadcasters.

The saga also won viewers’ hearts with lighter moments that included Sean Bean, as gang leader Ronnie Phelan, leading a charge of golf buggies to the theme from the film Apocalypse Now.

A scene featuring the cast line-dancing to the 1950s song The House of Bamboo has led to various imitations that have gone viral online.

Dubbed the “Scouse Sopranos” – in reference to the successful US crime drama – the show was partly funded by the Liverpool Film Office, with the regional authority saying the production boosted the local economy by £9m.

Details have not yet been released about the second series cast and filming start date.

Director of BBC Drama Lindsay Salt credited the production team who “brought it to the screen so classily”.

“I’m delighted that we now get to build on this fantastic first run and show that things are only just getting started for this very special series,” she said.

Although the series climax airs on BBC One later on Sunday, the full season has been available on BBC iPlayer where about three million people have already watched the finale.

Executive producer Sian McWilliams, from Left Bank Pictures, said: “After the tumultuous events of the season one finale, the gang rivalries and betrayals have escalated to new levels, new ones have just begun, and there is a lot of unfinished business.”