Peter Skeffington is one of those thoroughly decent, earnest fellows who cares deeply about his home, his landscape, the environment and those who people it. His wife, Lucy, is more demanding (but at heart rather lovable) and as pithy and sharp as her mother-in-law Honor can be. Lucy's current passion is horses, Peter's are plants, plant-hunting and the rehabilitation of young Danny, a boy from the local home for dysfunctional youths. Peter is, in an nutshell, a polite man in a naughty world. Even the village is hardly of stock variety - the vicar and his companion are bizarre, the garage man a Bible-bashing tyrant, the local nymphet as mean as a snake. Nevertheless, redemption comes in curious disguises.