Episode synopses
Episode one - The Chick & The Hairy Guy
´óÏó´«Ã½ 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
´óÏó´«Ã½ 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
´óÏó´«Ã½ 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…
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