Episode One

A report written by Sam Tyler about his experiences is being read out by a young girl called Molly, who is being taken to her birthday party by her mother - Detective Inspector Alex Drake. However, the policewoman is called out to an urgent hostage situation taking place by the river Thames. She tries to reason with the hostage taker, who claims to know Alex and is called Andrew Layton. Molly then arrives on the scene, having left the car, and is take captive at gunpoint.

The man escapes with Molly onto the banks of the Thames, with a gunshot soon heard. Alex rescues her daughter but her former captor is nowhere to be found. After depositing Molly with her godfather, Alex is accosted by the criminal in her car and taken to a deserted, dilapidated boat and shot.

Alex wakes up in 1981 on a lavish boat, dressed in very suggestive clothing. After leaving the boat, a man grabs hold of her believing her to be a prostitute. Gene Hunt, Chris Skelton and Dean Carling arrive on the scene, pull out their guns and save her.

However, Alex is arrested due to her suspected profession, but it soon emerges that she is the new DI at the station. Everyone at the station seems shocked that the 'Alex' is a female. She discovers that Sam Tyler died during the previous year after a high-speed car chase, although his body was never found. Alex believes she can use Tyler's tactics to find a way back home and scours any nearby radios for messages from the present day.

The man who grabbed Alex outside the boat, Edward Markham, is suspected by Gene Hunt of being a drugs baron. There is a link between him and Layton, whose business she visits along with Chris. She manages to retrieve a notebook and is chased by a hallucination of a Pierrot clown that resembles David Bowie in his 'Ashes To Ashes' music video.

Markham is released and put under surveillance, although he quickly realises this and takes WPC Sharon 'Shaz' Taylor hostage. Gene Hunt uses Layton's notebook to figure out where Markham's location is, and a gunfight ensues between the police and the villains across the river. Drake pursues Layton and confronts him, but he has a gun to Shaz's head and has the upper hand.

Suddenly, Gene, Dean and Chris zip across the water in a speedboat and whip out their guns to ensure that Layton buckles and is arrested. Alex is surprised that she doesn't return home at this stage, later drowning her sorrows at Luigi's bar along with Gene.

> Click here for our interview with Philip Glenister and Keeley Hawes