On a lads' night out, Mickey looks for love in the wrong places and is savagely attacked. Meanwhile, Carl falls for the beautiful Clem and Mimi's sexy, challenging niece turns up at the Maguire house.

Aidan feels guilty that he stood by and let Kane rape Lara,especially when Kane turns his attentions to Letitia. After letting Lara stay with him and Patty Aidan agrees to testify and Kane is arrested. Jamie is almost tricked into doing the dirty work of a discredited policeman,Brooksy,to whom he owes a favour,but Karen stops him in time and Brooksy is sent packing after trying to knife Jamie. Micky ends up with a baby instead of a debt he was sent to collect and decides to move on,becoming a single father. As he leaves he is about to come out but Mimi,already aware of his sexuality,prevents him.

Shane recruits Jackson to help him rob a cigarette delivery at a local supermarket though the plan goes wrong and they have to flee. They do however come up with a lucrative alternative,selling food discarded by the supermarket. Gloria's brother Dom,a priest suspended for his drinking and womanizing,arrives,pursued by two angry husbands whilst Carl leaves for his police training,after a less than cordial farewell with Frank,now the proud owner of Terry the terrapin. Chesney takes drastic measures to avoid being the live-in boyfriend of the buxom Lise,alias Toploader.

Avril takes matters into her own hands on discovering her colleague Callum is addicted to the pills they are dispensing and Kelly,rejecting advice from those around her,flees the estate and ends up at a drugs rave. However,after passing out she imagines a conversation with a concerned Marty and returns to him. Dom bets Karen that if he successfully beds Ruby he can have her too but Karen tells Ruby,who leads Dom on but loses him the bet. Frank nonetheless suspects that Karen is attracted to Dom.

Marty's efforts to redirect the power supply to get free electricity plunges the estate in darkness though he believes that,having had so many volts pass through him and still survived,he is chosen for something. It still fails to prevent the looters from giving him a kicking. Whilst Jamie holds a lock-in at the Jockey - where Frank loses his coat - the women gather for drinks at Mimi's. Here Gloria confesses that her parents kept Dom but put her up for adoption and,on going to the pub for more drinks,she ends up in bed with Jamie. Chesney passes out whilst demonstrating to Billy his fitness regime for protecting the shop against thieves.

Following his collapse Chesney comes out of hospital to find that his cousin Toof wants to take him back to Bradford,where he can be offered a more affluent life-style. However Chesney realises that this this will place him under the thumb of his grandfather,the shop owner,and,encouraged by Patti,decides to stay on the estate and build the shop up on his own terms. Ruby and Kelly are recruited onto Lillian's panel to recruit new girls for the brothel. They do not get on though the brothel certainly ends up with a new look. Jamie continues his affair with Gloria,who,unlike him,seems to have no guilt feelings.

When Frank tells the Maguire brothers that Manchester's former war rooms have been taken over by the NAtional Lottery and are now home to thousands of scratch cards the boys,along with Frank,Ruby and Aidan,hatch a plan to tunnel underneath the main hall and steal the cards. Unnfortunately Frank's stupidity and a general falling out among thieves leads to the tunnel collapsing and trapping them. In Jamie's absence Karen sets out to prove to Mimi that she can replace him as the collector for the family's business whilst Letitia and her friends Keisha and Heaven post a girl band video online but suffer from a hacker.

Jamie, Shane, Frank, Aidan and Ruby are trapped underground where the pressure is building and truths, lies and confessions are abound.

Frank is having a terrible nightmare - he has been sentenced to life imprisonment and subject to the taunts of a sarcastic warder. But the reality,from Frank's viewpoint,is just as horrendous. The Department of Work and Pensions has finally caught up with him and considered him fit for work. His attempts to get Patty to injure him go wrong and he ends up working for World of Burgers. Shane and Jackson set up their own still,selling hooch to the pub and Mimi bribes them to employ Billy,who turns out to be more professional than imagined until he gets the mix wrong. Avril goes into business selling tablets to Patty,which has an odd effect on her.

Frank does well at World of Burgers,becoming employee of the week and hits it off with colleagues and customers but not the sweaty manager Wesley,who makes him dress as a giant chicken to promote the place. Frank retaliates with a go-slow so Wesley promotes him to manager but,following an armed robbery by one of his acquaintances,Frank is demoted again. Karen is alarmed when her son Connor starts to draw penises on walls so Mimi,with the aid of a stolen library book,starts to give her lessons in motherhood. However,after a traumatic incident with her daughter Cilla,Mimi realises that child rearing cannot be conducted via books and that each case is different. Kelly,angry with Aiden for calling her an old prozzie, tries to teach him to respect women,ultimately becoming a surrogate mother figure for him.

Whilst working as a handyman Marty meets Brazilian Aparecita,whom he believes is a domestic slave and spends three grand belonging to Lilian to 'free' her. As a solution Lilian employs her at the brothel,where she is very happy,but Marty's misguided attempts to liberate her further only end in her arrest. Gloria is appalled when Dominic brings home Hazel,the birth mother who gave her up for adoption whilst keeping her brother. Dominic is still his mother's darling and Hazel wants them to leave together but Dominic resists though at least the two women have a brief heart to heart before Hazel departs. Billy feels he is being walked over and uses a self help hypnosis tape with strange results whilst Shane,being distracted by a phone message from wanton cousin Ruby,runs over a pedestrian in his car.

Short of cash Gloria gets a loan with a huge interest rate and gets drunk,waking up at Mimi's. Next day Billy finds a positive pregnancy test kit and,assuming Mimi is pregnant,gets advice from Jamie - who concludes that Gloria is actually pregnant after their fling. He offers her money for an abortion but,finding that the result was a false alarm, she rejects it. However Dominic gets Jamie to pay her to keep the secret from Karen. Chesney and Aidan are shocked when Jamie sends them to collect the meat for the pub raffle and end up with a live cow,which they call Alan. Too attached to it to kill it they let it go and buy in meat instead. Shane engineers a meeting with Ruthie,the widow of the man he ran over,whilst Avril annoys Jackson by clubbing with young colleague Calum but draws the line when the lad gets too serious.

Calling himself Danny McKenzie Shane continues to befriend Ruthie,agreeing to help her choose a headstone for her dead husband Eddie. However not only does he face opposition from Ruthie's teen-aged son Sean,who masturbates in public,but is haunted by Eddie's abusive ghost. Finally,rather than admit the truth to Ruthie,he takes Kelly's advice and roughly breaks things off with her. Kelly herself and Lilian face opposition when the super-efficient Louise opens a rival brothel at knock-down prices,stealing away some of Lilian's regulars,including Frank. When Louise offers Kelly a job she takes the opportunity to spy on her rival and,having obtained the details of all of Louise's clients,uses a little blackmail to see off the opposition.

After seeing a fatal road accident Marty decides that life is fleeting and eventually proposes to Kelly,who accepts. However when he receives a letter from his supposedly dead children in Spain,he is anxious to fly out to see what has happened. He does assure Kelly that he still wants to marry her so the engagement party goes ahead without him. Karen suspects Jamie of infidelity,initially with Ruby,but,convinced she is wrong,tries to set a honey trap with Gloria. Jamie tries to cover himself by claiming that Gloria came on to him but she sees it as prudent to end the affair. Lilian has a vision in which a talking dog warns her of imminent calamity on the estate. However the dog later returns to tell her that she was unable to prevent either of the lovers' tiffs.

Jackson and Shane are flourishing as wheeler dealers with stolen solar panels and food past its sell-by date. However when Shane,to Jackson's annoyance,starts to give away some left-overs to the homeless he has a queue of unemployed in the yard seeking hand-outs and agrees to donate food to the local Catholic priest. But the priest goes behind his back to steal his business,leaving Shane to resort to blackmail to get his livelihood back. Patty organizes coffee mornings for other elderly folk but is exposed as having played on their absent-mindedness to win money and jewellery from them by gambling. Soon she is reviled all over the estate but Kelly detects that she is cranking up the abuse to gain sympathy and forces her into a deal. Meanwhile Billy is having problems in the bedroom department which Lilian,Dominic and a little plain talking soon cure.

Following the suicide of his old flame Alice, Dominic loses both his faith and the will to live and asks Frank to help him to kill himself. Frank,however,does his best to sabotage every attempt until eventually Dominic has an epiphany whilst sitting on the roof of a high building and decides to return to the land of the living,seeing it as his business to stop Avril's attempt to help her daughter Letitia lose her cherry. Meanwhile Lillian gets her own back on magistrate Malcolm,a client who has passed her off as his life coach to justify his expenses.

Jamie is receiving death threats by letter and text and,after his lock-up is torched and Karen's blouse nailed to the door,suspects that one of the pub regulars is in league with his tormenters. After Karen is attacked he agrees to meet the gang responsible and give them two hundred thousand pounds to back off but is shocked when he discovers who is behind the threats. Whilst Frank,now sacked,claims he has had sex by proxy with all the estate through 'Sex Degrees of Separation' Avril wrongly diagnoses Patty with terminal leukaemia,which gives Patty the opportunity to insult the whole estate. However Avril has cause to think again when the real results come through.

Frank is delegated to tell Patty she is terminally ill but she already knows and asks that he help her see Ireland before she dies. With no funds for the ferry trip he takes her to the beach at Waterloo,where she swears she can see the old country. At her request he leaves her alone and,on return,finds she has taken matters into her own hands. As Mimi prepares for her wedding anniversary her constant criticisms of Ruby's father lead Ruby to taking her hostage at knife-point with tragic consequences. Dominic takes brotherly love to a whole new level with Gloria but Jackson,aware of Avril's fling with young Calum from work,walks out on her.

Jamie, Shane, Frank, Aidan and Ruby are trapped underground where the pressure is building and truths, lies and confessions are abound.

Frank is delegated to tell Patty she is terminally ill but she already knows and asks that he help her see Ireland before she dies. With no funds for the ferry trip he takes her to the beach at Waterloo,where she swears she can see the old country. At her request he leaves her alone and,on return,finds she has taken matters into her own hands. As Mimi prepares for her wedding anniversary her constant criticisms of Ruby's father lead Ruby to taking her hostage at knife-point with tragic consequences. Dominic takes brotherly love to a whole new level with Gloria but Jackson,aware of Avril's fling with young Calum from work,walks out on her.

Short of cash Gloria gets a loan with a huge interest rate and gets drunk,waking up at Mimi's. Next day Billy finds a positive pregnancy test kit and,assuming Mimi is pregnant,gets advice from Jamie - who concludes that Gloria is actually pregnant after their fling. He offers her money for an abortion but,finding that the result was a false alarm, she rejects it. However Dominic gets Jamie to pay her to keep the secret from Karen. Chesney and Aidan are shocked when Jamie sends them to collect the meat for the pub raffle and end up with a live cow,which they call Alan. Too attached to it to kill it they let it go and buy in meat instead. Shane engineers a meeting with Ruthie,the widow of the man he ran over,whilst Avril annoys Jackson by clubbing with young colleague Calum but draws the line when the lad gets too serious.

Avril takes matters into her own hands on discovering her colleague Callum is addicted to the pills they are dispensing and Kelly,rejecting advice from those around her,flees the estate and ends up at a drugs rave. However,after passing out she imagines a conversation with a concerned Marty and returns to him. Dom bets Karen that if he successfully beds Ruby he can have her too but Karen tells Ruby,who leads Dom on but loses him the bet. Frank nonetheless suspects that Karen is attracted to Dom.