91Èȱ¬

Episode synopses

Episode one - The Chick & The Hairy Guy

91Èȱ¬ TWO, Wednesday 26 January

It's 1974, and 15-year-olds Ben, Doug and Philip are best mates at a Birmingham grammar school.

Whilst Doug's passion for left-wing politics isn't shared by Ben and Philip (who are mainly interested in getting their prog-rock band off the ground) they are united by a complete lack of success with the opposite sex.

Ben's older sister Lois isn't much luckier in love, resorting to arranging a date through the personal ads.

Her date is amiable guitarist and self-professed Hairy Guy Malcolm.

Ben's father Colin has no romantic problems but plenty of work worries - he's middle management at the strife-ridden Longbridge car factory, where Doug's father Bill is shop steward and active Union man.

Meanwhile, Bill is conducting a clandestine affair with pretty secretary Miriam Newman - older sister of the boys' schoolmate Claire (who is herself lusted after by Doug but actually fancies Ben...)

Philip's parents don't have it any easier as, unbeknown to his bus driver father Sam, his mother Barbara embarks upon an affair with Philip's art teacher Mr Plumb.

At the centre of this romantic maelstrom is Ben, oblivious to it all.

He is equally unaware of the increasingly fraught political backdrop - racism and IRA terrorism on the rise, trade unions under threat and other "freaky times on the event horizon" - he has only one goal in life: the gorgeous and unattainable Cicely Boyd.

Until, out of the blue, something happens that turns his family's world upside down forever…

Episode two - The Maws Of Doom

91Èȱ¬ TWO, Wednesday 2 February

1975. Despite the horror of the previous year, life for the Trotter family goes on. Now in the sixth form, Ben works on the school paper, along with Doug and Claire.

He continues to lust hopelessly after Cicely Boyd, venting his frustration in an excoriating review of her Desdemona in the school's production of Hamlet.

Things go from bad to worse when he and Philip finally unveil their prog-rock symphony to their unimpressed drummer, bass-player and singer. So unimpressed, in fact, that they decide to break away and become a punk outfit instead.

Philip's gloom deepens when he finds a letter from Mr Plumb to his mother.

His father Sam finds the letter a few weeks later, and although Barbara insists that nothing has actually happened, they move into separate bedrooms.

The following term, Cicely confronts Ben about his scathing review… but surprisingly, she agrees with it. She hates everything about herself and wants to change.

A delighted Ben can't believe he's finally going to get the woman of his dreams.

Things are also going well for Doug, who is invited down to London by NME magazine and sent out to cover a local gig, punk band Concrete Boil.

Bill finally spends a proper night with Miriam in a hotel, only to be spotted by a spiteful Longbridge factory worker (Roy Slater), there for a meeting of like-minded racists.

Alarmed by being seen, Bill breaks off the affair - only for Miriam to go missing…

Episode three - Look Over Your Shoulder

91Èȱ¬ TWO, Wednesday 9 February

Now in the upper sixth, life is sweet for Ben - he's been made a prefect and he spends most of his time with Cicely.

But it's not long before everything's turned upside down again - Philip gets together with Claire and a devastated Ben loses Cicely to the punk singer from his old band.

At an end of term party, a hungover Ben wakes up in a wardrobe with a girl called Jennifer - they couldn't be more incompatible but start dating anyway.

Claire goes to interview Bill for the school newspaper, supposedly about the Union problems at Longbridge, but she confronts him about her still missing sister, Miriam.

The 1977 Queen's Jubilee looms and, at a street party, Philip confronts his mother about her affair and Bill tells Irene about Miriam.

On Doug's urging, Ben ditches Jennifer and rushes back to Cicely, who's disappeared to Wales ill with glandular fever.

When the Trotter family also goes to Wales on holiday that summer, Lois suggests to Ben that he go after Cicely and, for the first time in his life, Ben decides to act on impulse.

After a night-time trek through rain and mud, he reaches his goal.

And so it is that Ben returns to school to collect his exam results, hand-in-hand with Cicely - his triumph witnessed by Philip and Doug and the rest of the sixth form.

Ben's delighted to learn that Doug and Claire have finally got together.

It's a glorious moment, and one that surely can't last…