Arthur Pilbeam is a man with a very important job: buried deep within the bowels of the BBC's Broadcasting House is the button to deliver the pips, marking the hour, every hour, on radio across the globe, and he is the only one authorised to press it.

As a meteorologist working at the broadcaster, this is his sole concern and it affords him an element of respect at the organisation, but also comes with some drawbacks - notably the requirement to be in Broadcasting House in person for just a minute or two as every single hour of the day strikes; and his girlfriend is now thoroughly bored of the constant interruptions.

When she consequently leaves him, Arthur sabotages the pips in a fit of upset and anger, and is duly reassigned by the Meteorological Office. Acquiescing to his still-frustrated request to be sent somewhere with no women, they go one further and post him somewhere with practically no one at all: an isolated lighthouse positioned on a dangerous crop of rocks somewhere off the coast of Scotland, where he is to fulfil the dual role of lighthouse keeper and weather observer, reporting conditions back to the mainland by radio.

Arriving on the coast a few days later, Pilbeam is shocked by the extent of the desolation he finds at the lighthouse, and more than a little spooked by the odd behaviour of the locals he meets in the nearest mainland port, a small fishing village, who warn him he'll at very least go insane from the solitude.

He hasn't even finished unloading his small set of belongings from the small boat that's taken him across the sea, however, before things take an even odder turn and they begin to go missing almost in front of his eyes. When a little girl appears in one of the rooms and declares she's smuggled herself over with him, some of the happenings start to make sense - but when a fully grown adult woman washes up on the rocks below the building, apparently the sole survivor from a torpedoed ship, Arthur's experience gets far odder, and far more chilling!