As Christmas celebrations get under way, Britain is rocked by a deadly new food scare - "mad turkey disease".

In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.

Girls growing up in 1960-61 London develop a passion for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the first British team in the 20th century to win the English league and FA Cup "double". Twenty years later, one of the girls tracks down players of the '60-'61 Spurs for a documentary.

On a weekend trip to the seaside town of Lyme Regis, two seventeen-year-old boys - Sam with an interest in ecology and Martin with an interest in girls - are the youngest residents (ever) at a guest house run by a highly eccentric old lady.

The producer and director are delighted with their television play about a comprehensive school. It seems truthful, authentic, really lifelike. But as rehearsals progress, a tense difference of opinion emerges between the author and the young schoolboy actor.

A series of heinous murders ends with the arrest of the supposed killer. But when similar grisly killings continue, a beautiful reporter sets out to prove that the police are holding the wrong man. Or are they?