The last time we saw Homeland's Nicholas Brody he was being ferreted by his lover, Carrie Mathison, into a foreign land where not even the American intelligence agencies' finest minds could find him. Canada.

Back home, the CIA's headquarters in Langley had been devastated by a car bomb, with more than 200 dead. Brody, the kidnapped US marine who returned home a national hero only to cut short his political career by murdering the vice president, was the No 1 suspect. Again.

The third season of Homeland, which will return to Channel 4 in the autumn, feels like a watershed moment for the breakout global hit.

The first series met with almost universal critical acclaim but the second, with its extravagant twists and turns, put a strain on viewers' ability to suspend their disbelief, prompting comparisons with the real-time Keifer Sutherland thriller, 24.

Howard Gordon, who developed Homeland with Gideon Raff, creator of the Israeli drama on which it was based, Prisoners of War, knows all about 24, having worked as showrunner on the Fox drama which ended in 2010. Homeland showrunner (and its third co-creator) Alex Gansa also worked on 24.

"It surprised us when Homeland resonated as widely as it did," says Gordon. "Having done 24 for 10 years I thought there would be audience counterterrorism fatigue. But we got to ask questions on Homeland that we never got to ask on 24.

"The back and forth of Carrie and Brody's very combustible relationship, we found very distinct from 24," he adds. "That relationship became the real molecular basis of the show."

Now it's been commissioned for a third 12-part run by the US cable network Showtime, Gordon says he was surprised by how much of the story is still left to be told.

"Obviously we have to deal with that very climactic last episode. All bets are off with the Brody family [Nicholas is presumably not going back] and where Carrie lands after this is the big question."

The producers were so set on casting Claire Danes as Carrie that her character in the original script was called Clare (Maria Bello and Kerry Washington were among the other names that came up). But Brody – played by Damian Lewis – was more difficult, says Gordon.

"Because Brody is such a cipher people didn't know quite who he was and had lots of different ideas about what he might look like and how he might act. [Damian] just did it brilliantly."

The latest British actor to make it big in the US, Lewis had previously appeared in NBC drama Life but it was Homeland that propelled him into the big league (and Barack Obama's table at a White House dinner).

Continuing a trend that can be traced back to Hugh Laurie's starring role in House, Mark Strong is the latest Brit export, starring in a remake of BBC drama Low Winter Sun for the American home of Mad Men, AMC.

Gordon attributes the phenomenon to a "deficit" of acting talent in the US, although he is reluctant to go further – half-joking, presumably – in case he appears "unpatriotic".

It is also beginning to have serious ramifications for the UK. "It doesn't feel too melodramatic to call it a proper talent drain now," says Damien Timmer, joint managing director of Mammoth Screen, which made BBC2's Parade's End with HBO.

"It makes it harder to find leading men for British TV. Pilots always have long options – you are committing yourself for five years. But the economics of American TV are such that an actor is going to get paid so much more."

The global success of Homeland, shown in more than 40 countries from Afghanistan to Vietnam, generated renewed interest in the Israeli original, Prisoners of War, or Hatufim (which aired in the UK on Sky Arts).

Prisoners of War is a far less glossy affair, featuring two surviving Israeli soldiers – merged into a single character in Homeland – with no equivalent of Carrie Mathison.

"When you write a show you don't dare to think how an audience is going to respond," says Raff, who created, wrote and directed Prisoners of War. He had previously written and directed two feature films, Train and The Killing Floor.

"It became the highest-rating show in Israel and then Homeland took over the world," adds Raff. "The past few years have been an amazing ride. Kind of a dream."

Israeli TV is on a roll. Hebrew-language psychiatry drama BeTipul was remade as HBO's In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne, while Julia Stiles will star in Midnight Sun, NBC's remake of the conspiracy thriller Pillars of Smoke. NBC has also picked up the Soviet spy drama The Gordin Cell, which it will remake as MICE (Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego) to be written and directed by Peter Berg, the Battleship director who oversaw the US remake of Prime Suspect.

The Gordin Cell, like Prisoners of War, was made by the Israeli broadcaster Keshet. Part of Keshet Media Group, its distribution arm Keshet International opened a London office at the end of last year. A sign of the increasingly global nature of TV production, Keshet's London base is headed by former Sky drama executive Sara Johnson. Amelia Hann, executive producer of Channel 4's dating show The Undateables, will head up the new base's drive into factual and entertainment programming.

"Because we have to work with such low budgets in Israel [Prisoners of War cost $200,000 an episode] we have to be extremely creative how we tell a story," says Raff. "Sometimes playing with the format, like In Treatment, sometimes very controversial storylines, like Prisoners of War."

Gordon and Raff, who will be attending the Mip TV festival in Cannes on Monday, are working on a new drama, Tyrant, about an "unassuming American family drawn into the workings of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation". The pilot, for Rupert Murdoch's FX channel, is being directed by Life of Pi director Ang Lee. Filming will begin in Morocco later this year with writer and executive producer Craig Wright (Lost, Six Feet Under) also on board.

"It was Gideon's idea, I was just the midwife to it," says Gordon. "The moment he told me I was thrilled."

But what of Homeland? "It can go on as long as there is a fresh story to tell," says Gordon. Central to the show is not just the relationship between Carrie and Brodie, but between Carrie and her mentor, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin).

"That relationship is in some ways sacred," says Gordon. "The Brody-Carrie story has to evolve, it is entirely possible that there could be Homeland without Brody. But there is something about the relationship between Carrie and Saul that feels like the twin pole stars."

Homeland has not been without controversy, one critic labelling it "TV's most Islamophobic show" for its portrayal of characters such as TV reporter Roya Hammad, a lieutenant of terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir. But another critic suggested it gave al-Qaida "an almost dangerously fair hearing".

"We never set out to be politically correct but we did set out to be sensitive," says Gordon.

"With 24 we had that charge levelled at us a number of times. I like to think we deal with it honestly, and looked at ourselves and each other with clear consciences.

"It is a hard question to answer generally but every time the question came up it was very carefully considered. The notion that there was an agenda is absurd – quite the opposite."

Gordon and Raff will give a keynote speech on Monday at the Mip TV festival, which takes place in Cannes, 8-11 April