With jobs scarce in the recession-ridden UK of the early 1980s, the Geordie trio of Dennis, Neville and Oz decide to leave their wives and girlfriends in search of employment overseas. Dennis is the most mature of the three, philosophical and reasonably sensible. Neville is the drippy one, emotionally strained at having to leave his new wife, Brenda, while Oz is the archetypal slob: big, fat, bigoted and dense.

They are taken on as labourers on a Düsseldorf building site, where they share a hut with four other expatriates - boring Brummie electrician Barry, Cockney carpenter Wayne, level-headed Bristolian wrestler Bomber and Scouse petty crook Moxey. The seven make quite a team. Sharing each other's joys, despairs, hopes and worries, they drink and womanize through their tour of duty, edging from scrape to scrape and from scam to scam.

In the second series, the boys are reunited to renovate the Derbyshire mansion of Newcastle gangster Ally Fraser, for whom Dennis has been forced to work after amassing gambling debts. When that ends, the lads head off for a few episodes' labour under the Spanish sun, building a swimming pool at Ally's villa.

The series was revived for a third and fourth series by the BBC. By this time, Oz has decided to take life seriously, largely kicking the drink habit and looking to make business work for him. A spell in jail alongside disgraced politician / wheeler-dealer Jeffrey Grainger has set him up with an idea for dismantling and selling the transporter bridge at Middlesbrough.

He needs help, however, and recalls his old buddies so that the magnificent seven can ride again, this time into the desert sun of Arizona. There the bridge is used to spawn a canyon, rendering a casino, owned by native Chocanaw Americans, more profitable, and so saving their community. To replace the late Gary Holton, Noel Clarke was cast as his son, Wyman.