Hester and William Fields are a happily married, middle-aged, middle-class couple.

When their daughter Emma leaves home to live with her boyfriend, Peter, Hester becomes increasingly bored. Whilst William runs a small accountacy firm in the City, she ends up taking on a wide-ranging succession of activities, in a constant drive for self-improvement and variety in her life.

She juggles her array of adult education classes, community events and sporting past-times with running around after her elderly mother (who lives in a self-contained flat at the end of the garden) and gossipping with next-door neighbour Sonia.