A British Army section led by Sergeant Mike Swift are attempting to assault a sniper group in an apartment block in Basra.

The unit returns to Manchester, England, with Swift being hailed as a hero, but all experience difficulty integrating back into normal family life.

Lance Corporal Lee Hibbs, having also left the Army and being unimpressed with work as a nightclub bouncer, joins Ferguson and Lester, thinking he can play a role in rebuilding Iraq.

", mirroring the actor's real world origins, in order to prove he is British, the car having been driven away from the ambush by Lester, who has been shot in the neck.

Swift, promoted to Staff Sergeant and transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps,[2] is looking for Aliya by enquiring at her former hospital, where he meets Dr Sadiq Alasadi, a male doctor and influential local figure, who had been missing presumed dead in prison under Saddam Hussein's rule.

Having saved the American, Lester and Ferguson outfit, Pacific Solutions, has flourished, and they are looking to expand from simple escort protection of contractors, to organising the reconstruction projects as well, starting with Sadiq's hospital.

Hibbs' view of the Iraqi people has hardened, and he states he endorses the July attackers' actions, if it makes his sister, who has constantly opposed the war, realise "what they are like".

Meanwhile, in Iraq, Pacific Solutions is expanding, and Ferguson and Lester enter a partnership with Western investors in Dubai, explaining how they cream money off the top of coalition reconstruction grants by inventing cost overruns.

To pay back Lester, Ferguson persuades him that Hibbs can be used to drive a regular truck shipment they have been contracted to undertake from Kuwait to Basra, which routinely runs empty while Pacific Solutions are still paid for the job.

After Ferguson attempts a last minute change to the sundries total from $6,000 to $60,000, the doctor refuses to sign the contract, to the annoyance of Lester who sees an avenue to millions of dollars' worth of contacts closed.

Swift arranges for Hibbs to bring Aliya to his office, where they have sex, apparently for the first time, and Yassin, who has been getting progressively more religious, expresses displeasure at being in the company of "immoral women" like her.

After Swift leaves, Ferguson eventually instructs Hibbs and a colleague to do a job for him; they protest that they should not go outside with fewer than six men, and he counters that work is drying up and they cannot afford to use more.

Lester returns to the Basra Pacific office, and is angry at Ferguson, blaming his erratic behaviour, bullying and forgery for losing a multimillion-dollar oil field deal.

Tim Walker of The Independent called Occupation "a predictably masterly production" but felt that its "bleak climax...stretched the bounds of plausibility".

[4] Helen Rumbelow, also from The Times, reviewed the first episode and felt the opening "a sequence of brilliant film-making" but criticised the acting from Nesbitt and Graham as "a touch too comedic".

[6] Kathryn Flett wrote in The Guardian that "Nesbitt was very good and easy to like" but "not the film's star", feeling that performances by Stephen Graham and Warren Brown "made the deeper, more lasting impression".