It's 1981 and DCI Gene Hunt is back and he's swapped his Ford Cortina for an Audi Quattro, but is the 'The Manc Lion' we met in Life on Mars turning soft?
Gene turns his attentions to taking on the "southern nancy" criminal scum and flanked by his faithful sidekicks DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton, he transfers down South to the London Met. But Gene gets a surprise when he is thrown together with a sexy, ambitious and intelligent officer in the shape of single mother DI Alex Drake.
But Alex is ripped from her current world of equality and respect when she and her daughter are kidnapped. She is shot while making a bid for freedom and wakes up in a brothel in 1981, surrounded by men who look like something out of Miami Vice and is confused, to say the least. Here Alex comes face to face with some familiar characters, not just from her own life-time, but also from the reports logged by none other than Sam Tyler, which Alex has spent months pouring over.