Occupied France. A small village, Nouvion, has - at its heart - an equally small café, run by René Artois and his wife, Edith. But all is not as it seems at Café René, for the proprietor is the unwitting and unwilling hero of the French resistance; codename Nighthawk.

René struggles through the war, treading a dangerous line between the French resistance, the communist resistance and the occupying German forces, in order to keep his business afloat and his person out of a coffin. Not to mention keeping his affairs with each of his two waitresses hidden from the other - and certainly hidden from his wife!