When the BBC gets around to issuing a full press release you know there’s not long to wait, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Yes, the most hotly anticipated new drama of the year is barely more than a week away, and things are about to get 1980s crazy. Dig out your leg-warmers, glue your Rubik’s cube back together and make sure you’ve got a good supply of Campari and soda as we get into the 80s groove here on TV Scoop.

Paul, lucky bugger that he is, has already been given the privilege of a sneak preview at the press launch a couple of weeks ago. The rest of us will have to wait until next Thursday, but click through for a synopsis of that first episode, and some snippets of backstage gossip from the stars.

Although as we know there are elements in common with the brilliant Life on Mars – Gene Hunt and his two buddies being the most obvious – the passage of ten years and their relocation down South gives fertile ground for an entirely new dramatic template. Beth Willis, the show’s producer, says: “We thought we’d bring [Gene] to London where his northern views would come into sharp conflict with ‘the southern ponces’ he finds there. And, of course, he should take his A-team of Ray Carling and Chris Skelton with him.”

Writer and co-creator Ashley Pharaoh adds: “All the research we did indicated that the police knew the Scarman Report was on its way, and they knew it wasn’t going to be good news, so the threat of that hangs over the whole series. A very specific era of policing is coming to an end. I think there’s a slight sense of melancholy to Gene at times – he misses the North and the old days, but he’s a fighter and refuses to give up.”

As if that wasn’t enough for poor old Gene to deal with, here comes a woman – a spunky, gutsy, noughties woman full of poise and political correctness – to muscle in on his turf. Jane Featherstone, joint MD of Kudos Film & Television and executive producer of both Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes, takes up the story: “Gene has never come across a woman like Alex before and she rocks his world. How is it possible to work with someone so incredibly confident and attractive, not to mention posh and from London, and, bloody hell, a woman?! Through Alex’s presence at the station, we see a different side to Gene – a more complex, gentler side, a man with dreams, hopes and fears.” Blimey.

Philip Glenister is philosophical about the effects of all this on his character: “Fundamentally, Gene hasn’t changed at all. Scum is scum wherever you are – London, Manchester, wherever – and Gene knows how he likes to deal with that. At the same time, Scarman’s report is hanging over him (he actually meets Scarman in the flesh later in the series and gives him a piece of his mind) and Gene is determined to protect his team.

“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.”

The face of the test-card girl that haunted Sam Tyler is replaced in A2A with a sinister clown, reminiscent of Pennywise from Steven King’s It. Keeley Hawes explains the significance of this particular clown: “He’s an expression of her fears about death and Molly [DCI Drake's daughter back in 2008]. He’s the very darkest, deepest parts of her brain that she doesn’t really want to go to. He is such a genius creation; lots of people don’t like clowns, especially the Pierrot clown which was very Eighties.

“I think it’s probably his unpredictability [that makes the clown so sinister]. I never know what he’s going to do from one minute to the next and it’s things that horror stories are made of. A clown should make you laugh, but this one actually just makes the hairs on your arm go up!”

Episode One:

DI Alex Drake has not only risen rapidly through the Met but also trained as a psychologist. She is writing a book on colleagues who have suffered trauma, and spent several months studying Sam Tyler. Brilliant at her job, but at the expense of her home life, she has no relationship save that with her 12-year-old daughter, Molly.

On Molly’s birthday, Alex is called to a hostage scenario where drug-addled Arthur Layton holds a gun to the head of a busker. Layton tells Alex that he knew her parents – both of whom were killed when Alex was only eight years old – before shooting her in the head.

When Alex wakes up, she is in 1981, dressed in a tiny red skirt with Ultravox ringing in her ears. When the police crash the boat party she is in, they are Sam Tyler’s creations: DCI Gene Hunt, DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton. Desperate to get back to her daughter, the only clue Alex can find is surveillance footage on Layton. She is convinced that Layton, in 1981 just a down-at-heel junk dealer, is the mastermind behind the case she’s just walked into – a major drug bust that Gene has been after for months. Gene believes that the man responsible is Edward Markham, a man whose pastel suits and arrogance typify the Eighties yuppies he hates. For Alex, catching Layton might be the only way to grab control of her destiny and provide the trigger that gets her out of 1981, back to her old life and to her daughter Molly.

Ashes to Ashes: BBC One, Thursday 7 February, 9pm