In the TV movie, Nick Cameron (Neil Morrissey) is a pilot running an air courier service with his brother Joe (Mark Womack).
Nick agrees and is taken to a remote country manor, where a company called Gyges is researching a new technique which protects skin against UV radiation.
Nick starts to have doubts, but despite his protests he is strapped to a machine which scans laser beams up and down his body.
News of Nick's appeal worries the Gyges organisation, headed by a mysterious man in a mask and gloves.
Alice works out that a gas canister used by Gyges doesn't read Hanoi, as Nick thought, but rather Ha No.1, aka Harnium Nitrate, the chemical manufactured by Lawrence's company Solex.
Waiting in the rain, Nick turns invisible and follows Lawrence into the building, spying on him while he accesses his computer.
He agrees to meet with Ms Jeffries, dressed in gloves and balaclava, and offers himself in exchange for Alice.
They ride away from the mansion, but as it rains Nick, the suit and the bike vanish, leaving Alice speeding down a country lane in mid air.
Alice returns to work to and meets DCI Moreau, who has been investigating Gyges and has made arrests.
In UK daily newspaper The Independent, Thomas Sutcliffe wrote, "The somewhat open ending of The Vanishing Man (ITV) suggests that last night's comedy thriller was intended as a pilot".
Sutcliffe found the programme eschewed a sophisticated treatment of the main character's invisibility, "settling instead for the charm of a protagonist who can knock baddies on the head just when they think they have things under control, and then unpredictably reappear in the nude for a bit of comic relief".