The Hunt is on...

DCI Gene Hunt is back - but he's left Manchester behind in 1973 and has transferred to the Met Police, to clean up the streets of London, circa 1981. Meanwhile, police psychologist DI Alex Drake is taken hostage in London in 2008. She gets shot, passes out and wakes up in a brothel in 1981.

When Gene and his loyal sidekicks DS Ray Carling, Chris Skelton and young, enthusiastic WPC Sharon 'Shaz' Granger come to Alex's rescue, she soon recognises her new colleagues from Sam Tyler's reports, which she had been reading in 2008. But now she must work out how to get back to the future...

Elsewhere, Gene is trying to tackle London's drug problem and suspects that city playboy, Edward Markham, is the brains behind it all. But when Alex finds a tape titled 'Arthur Layton', she's challenges Gene; Layton was her kidnapper in 2008 and could be the key to her getting home.

Gene soon realises that Alex has brains, as well as looks and thinks they can work together. But Alex is sure that the only way to get back to her daughter in 2008 is to go it alone...