It’s a reasonably nice day in Manchester in 2006 and Detective Inspector Sam Tyler [John Simm] and his team, which includes his girlfriend Maya [Archie Panjabi] have discovered another victim of a particularly cagey serial killer. When Sam and Maya quarrel about methodology and hunches, Maya stalks off and, following her hunch, is taken by the killer – which leads to Sam being hit by a car and waking up in 1973.

As Sam becomes acclimatized, however unwillingly, to his new environs – and their much earthier methods of policing – he comes to the conclusion that his situation is one of three things: madness; a coma, or actual time-traveling. One thing is for sure: Manchester of 1973 might as well be Manchester of 1953 from the misogynistic, rough & tumble, hunch-following nature of his new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt [Philip Glenister]. Only Women’s Police Constable Annie Cartwright [Liz White] is at all sympathetic to his confusion – Detective Sergeant Ray Carling [Dean Andrews] is outright hostile, and Detective Sergeant Chris Skelton [Marshall Lancaster] has no idea what to make of him.
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