During a visit to childhood friend Edith, retired housewife Hetty Wainthropp discovers that Edith's husband, Frank, has a son by a previous marriage. Hetty decides to turn amateur detective to trace him. When this gives her a taste for detection, Hetty decides to set up a private detective agency.

Every cub reporter wants a front page 'splash' and the journalists from The Brit, a top-selling daily tabloid, are no exception. They're on the trail of a sensational story and their jobs depend on it.

Life for shy, romantic civil servant Leslie Bliss would be pure bliss if only he could get together with Julia, the new love of his life. Saffron and Gee appea rto be having a few problems on that score in the flat upstairs. Should all his hopes come to nothing, there's always his beloved Mastermind to fall back on.

Working-class couple Shirley and Cyril are in conflict over whether they should have children, their problems with 'yuppies' moving into the neighbourhood and outpricing them, and the advent of Cyril's ageing mother's seventieth birthday.

Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.

A frustrated teenage girl creates her perfect man in a virtual reality machine and in a freak accident, gives him life.

Forty-five-year-old Adrian has been living with his mother Lucy and running their Wiltshire dairy farm all his adult life. When Lucy unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, a rogue's gallery of family members show up at the farm to argue over the execution of Ruth's will. The one object that everyone seems to want, and several people try to steal, is Ruth's valuable Modigliani painting. In the midst of all this confusion over Ruth's death, a mysterious visitor named Ilaria inserts herself onto the scene and has a surprising effect on those gathered.