Mr Corbett is a cruel employer to Ben Partridge. One night on New Years Eve Ben is sent out to deliver some medicine. Along the way he wishes his master was dead, little knowing that the man he is delivering to is the Collector of Souls.

They have always been trouble and now they are in trouble. When three generations of the Slaters - Kat, Little Mo, Lynn, Zoe and Mo - go up town, it could only really end with a night in a police cell. But straight out of the disco, the fiery Slater girls - dressed in school uniforms - are far too hot for the local constabulary to handle. With time on their hands they have an opportunity to look back on their lives; Mo's bust-ups, Lynn's altercations at the altar, Kat's confrontation with her past, Little Mo's nightmare with evil Trevor and a cauldron of steamy romances. When not flirting with the night sergeant, they give the inside story on the Slater highs and lows; the passion, the heartbreak, the fights and laughter of a family that doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "The quiet life."

Ray is an aging ex-socialist who has become a bankrobber after seeing the demise of socialism in 1980s Britain. Teaming up with a gang of other has-beenish crims, he commits one bank job too many. The gang dissolves in a murderous flurry of recriminations.

Stella, 14, works nights. She sings 60s numbers between the stripper with a snake and gorgeous Doris in working men's clubs. She knows what makes her act a success, but does she want to be the sole breadwinner for her family?

After an audacious jewellery robbery the whole James family heads for home on the run with the obsessive detective Julia Armstrong in hot pursuit.

Robert Clark is 17, wheelchair-bound, and he hasn't long to live. But he tries to come to terms with a bleak outlook. So do his father and brother Mark. Out of the situation, the three discover a bond and a certain strength.