During the opening scenes of the first episode, Drake, while driving her daughter Molly (Grace Vance) to school is unexpectedly called to a hostage situation near the embankment of the River Thames.

Upon returning to her car she fails to notice Layton in the back, who forces her at gunpoint to a disused barge and tells her that he knew her parents who died in 1981, Tim (Andrew Clover) and Caroline Price (Amelia Bullmore).

After shocking the unit with the revelation she is the DI of the squad, Drake learns that Hunt, Carling and Skelton transferred to London following the death of Sam Tyler a year previously.

By the second series (set in 1982) Alex Drake is shown to have become more at ease with her life in the 1980s, and that her relationship with Gene Hunt has improved to the point where they work separately from the rest of the team and conduct unofficial investigations.

Coinciding with the Martin Summers plot, the main storyline witnesses Drake and Hunt working together in order to uncover corruption within Fenchurch East CID.

After several discoveries and unofficial investigations led by Hunt and Drake, it is revealed that their superior officer, Charlie Mackintosh (Roger Allam) is heavily involved in the web of corruption.

Following her return to the 1980s, Hunt explains that after his accidental shooting of her he was accused of attempted murder and fled to the Isle of Wight and the Costa del Sol for a period of three months.

Drake learns that she is trapped in a purgatory where Gene is a guide or male Valkyrie for dead police officers, while Keats is a demon tempting them to hell.

She bids a sad farewell to Gene as she passes on to the Railway Arms pub (a police analogue to Valhalla) with Ray, Chris, and Shaz.

The series 3 finale explains that the 'Gene Hunt world' is in fact a purgatory for police officers with the Railway Arms pub acting as a 'gateway' to heaven.