In the first episode, Detective Inspector Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), a 21st-century police officer, is investigating the notes written by Sam Tyler (John Simm).
While doing this, Drake is shot and awakes in 1981, where she meets Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), Ray Carling (Dean Andrews) and Chris Skelton (Marshall Lancaster) whom she has read about in Tyler's notes.
Keats tears away the roof of the police station to reveal the starry expanse of space (which has appeared before to Alex and the rest of the team) showing the world is fictitious and a construct of Gene's making, so is some form of a limbo dimension for deceased officers.
Alex and Gene have a heart-to-heart, and then crack the case of the smuggled jewels, but thinking of the rest of the team, they realise Chris took his radio with him.
Just as Keats is about to tempt them down, Alex and Gene shout through the radio about the case, and Shaz returns to pose as the air stewardess to set up the sting operation.
Following the successful foiling of the jewel smuggling attempt, Gene, acting as a form of Guardian Angel, or Ferryman similar to Charon, takes Chris, Ray and Shaz for them to move on to "eternal happiness", symbolised by Nelson the landlord and his pub "The Railway Arms", which both appear on a London street corner (despite being located in Manchester in Life on Mars).