A platoon of British paratroopers on border patrol in South Armagh face a series of tense encounters.

It's a new start for teenager Rita Patel and her family - new home, new school, new diary, new life. But their happiness is short-lived when racist skinheads attack the family and their home.

Unemployed youngsters spend their days at the roller disco, circling round and round, before being called to take up low-paid jobs as they become available. For others, it's a subsistence existence of vending machine food, video games, with sex and drugs freely available as distractions.

Henry Wilt is a more or less failed teacher who fantasizes about murdering his dominant, non-attentive wife Eva. At a party who gets stuck in an inflatable doll and makes a complete fool of himself. Eventually, he dumps the doll in a hole at a building site. However, he has been witnessed getting rid of the doll and when his wife disappears on the night after the party, the police and Inspector Flint have strong suspicions on Mr Wilt.

Sex is currency. It commands power and can instill fear. Tom, a young man with a troubled past finds himself sucked into a seedy underworld by George Norris, a now super villain with a sadistic streak. A helpless pawn in one of Norris's narcotic scams with a bent cop, Dunston, Tom is dragged deeper into a vicious circle of blood money, vice and ruthless violence from which their seems no way out. Until fate gives Tom a glimmer of hope. When Norris is killed in his apartment, Tom seizes his chance to escape. Terrified and covered in Norris's blood, Tom heads downstairs to his neighbors, Max and Nikki his new friends in the city. With going to the police out of the question, Max and Nikki speed Tom to their desolate cottage deep in the Welsh countryside. With the luxury of space, Tom begins to realize a long-forgotten dream; a return to happier times before his innocence was shattered. Suppressed emotion flood back provoked by Tom's attraction to Nikki...

'Look, I'm not being horrible or nothing, Sadie, but all you've got is a body. You've got to make the most of it. It's not enough just to like the idea of being a model. You've got to be businesslike about it.' How does 16-year-old Sadie react to her friend Mary's advice? Where - in the glamour model world - will she end up?

Poland is under Communist rule. An exiled Polish theater director is in England, enthusiastically preparing an abstract play which will criticize the authoritarian Polish government. His sons might not share his political views, though.