Exponentially increasing levels of unemployment and simmering racial tension in Moss Side, inner Manchester, exploded into mass riots on the 8th of July 1981, following the siege of a police station.

In the Moss frames the events from the perspectives of Janet, a student nurse working in A&E, and Nav, a Sikh police officer on the streets. Both crave a return to normality and just want to fit in, but when violence breaks out and a teenage boy is stabbed, they are thrust together and forced to confront questions that arise about what really happened in the Moss.