Elspeth Charlton

At the Trenartha Tin Plate Works a bitter industrial dispute has lasted five months. The founder of the company, the staunch conservative John Anthony, refuses to accede to the demands of the workforce, despite the cessation of output and the resultant decline in share value and despite the human suffering the strike is causing, especially to the families of the workers. Equally uncompromising is the strike leader David Roberts, who even opposes his own union by holding out for the workers' demands.

Neil's beach holiday with the Middleton family turns sour over his refusal to bathe. The situation is resolved by an old woman and a cat.

Abel Mason is a man caught in a loveless marriage with a harridan wife who constantly berates him and beats their son Dick. When the one woman he loves dies at the hands of her husband after he was sent a letter by Mason's wife, exposing the affair, Abel leaves her for good taking to the road and young Dick with him.

Financial and emotional accounts are settled as a family battle to survive in an unforgiving land.

Joe and Sarah Marriot are a pair of European campers who have pitched their tent for a little R & R at a campsite in France. The other families that have come to the site on holiday provide great comedy and plenty of people watching for the Marriots. Of course, you'd expect hilarity from characters dubbed the Fitness Family, Mr. and Mrs. Topless, Fatty Granada, and the In-the-Trades. But the Marriots' enjoyment of observing the outside world turns inward when the entrance of Early Bird, a free-spirited female, shakes up their little nest.