Superintendent Sandra Pullman whose brilliant career is sidelined after a hostage rescue goes disastrously wrong has been put in charge of a new department - The Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS). However she is soon dismayed to discover that her unit is to be manned by former detectives who have long since hung up their badges. Pullman's recruits - grieving widower Jack Halford, once her mentor in the murder squad; the compulsive obsessive ex-Inspector Brian Lane and ex-Sergeant Gerry Standing, one of the top thief-takers of his time, who left the force amid rumours of corruption - might have years of experience, but they know little of modern police methods. Can she create a crack team out of this trio of eccentric dinosaurs who are quickly discovering the rules of the game are no longer what they used to be?