DRAMA series don't come much riskier than BBC1's Ashes To Ashes, although the makers previously showed great daring by killing off in its prime one of the best new TV series in years. They ended Life On Mars, in which a modernday policeman found himself living in the 1970s, after just two glorious seasons.

Putting a new spin on the time-travel cop theme has been relatively easy, but can it win over the public and critics like its predecessor?

Or will it seem like a contrived attempt to prolong an idea for commercial rather than artistic reasons?

Ashes To Ashes begins in 1981 - the year of Charles and Diana's wedding, the Brixton riots and Bucks Fizz winning the Eurovision Song Contest.

Maverick cop Gene Hunt (played once more by Philip Glenister), as sexist and politically incorrect as ever, leaves Manchester to join the capital's Metropolitan Police, taking colleagues Ray Carling and Chris Skelton with him.

The early Eighties being a period of cultural, musical and political transition ensures there are plenty of things for Hunt to react to. And then there's the time travel twist in the form of Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), a police psychologist and thoroughly modern 21st Century woman who's catapaulted from 2008 to 1981.

As she treated Sam Tyler, the time traveller in the first series, she's heard all about Gene Hunt. His reputation has gone before him.

How will she cope with his outmoded attitudes and how will he cope with a stronger woman than he's ever met before?

"Through Sam, Alex has learnt all about Gene Hunt, Ray Carling and Chris Skelton.

She's called to an intense hostage crisis involving a drug dealer who shoots her in the head at point blank range. Next thing she knows, she's in 1981," explains co-creator, writer and executive producer Matthew Graham.

"Alex is horrified to discover that sharing her delusion are the very characters she heard about from Sam Tyler, in particular a certain DCI Gene Hunt. Furthermore, 1981 was the very year her parents were mysteriously killed by a car bomb. Is that somehow connected to her presence there?"

When Alex arrives, Hunt is immediately suspicious of her motives, says Glenister. The world around him is changing and he wants to cling on to what he knows.

"Alex drives him up the wall with her endless psychology and theories. He often complains that she gives him brain ache and yet he knows that when they work together, they make a good team.

"So sometimes, despite himself, Gene agrees to trust her. He's drawn to her and doesn't really know why. They're a great match."

Hanging over Hunt is the Scarman Report, which aims to phase out his way of hit-firstask- questions-later school of policing. Fundamentally, though, he hasn't changed at all.

"Scum is scum wherever you are - London, Manchester, wherever - and Gene knows how he likes to deal with that," says the actor.

"At the same time, Scarman's report is MET MAVERICK: DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) with time traveller Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) in Ashes To Ashes hanging over him and Gene is determined to protect his team. He actually meets Scarman in the series and gives him a piece of his mind.

"He occasionally admits very, very reluctantly that getting evidence is quite fashionable these days. What we see is a man losing his grip on the power he had as a policeman, the changing face of the police force, particularly the Met in London.

"He's trying to do the right thing but finding it extremely difficult to fit in with the changing times."

Hunt's beloved Cortina, involved in many screeching tyres chases in Life On Mars, has given way to an Audi Quattro in Ashes To Ashes. The actor loves his new car. "The Quattro was one of the first four-wheel drives that properly clung to the ground. That's why everyone wanted one," he says.

"But we couldn't do Gene's high-speed handbrake turns so we had to fit a hydraulic handbrake so I could rag it round those corners.

It's a two-door car as well, so Ray and Chris can only get out of the back when I say so."

As for Glenister, he wasn't doing anything as cool as his character in the 1980s. "I was just trying to get laid while listening to Human League, wanted to be Simon le Bon and spent a lot of time squeezing my spots,"

he says.

"I remember Charles and Diana's wedding because I went and slept on The Mall with some mates the night before so we could be near the front. On the day their carriage went past and they waved as they went by, I was convinced Diana gave me the eye. Who were we to know the fairy tale of the day would end in tears".

* Ashes To Ashes begins on BBC 1 next month.