Season 1
6 episodes
45 min. per episode
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Pauline navigates sisterly chaos, uncovering buried secrets while seeking her own identity in a whirlwind of love and conflict.
Episodes
Pauline Paradise retires from her lollipop-lady job, but only teacher Peter Bachman seems to miss her. Her selfish, lazy husband Ken is as negative as ever, while elder son Kevin, a firefighter, is obsessed with his daughter's christening and his pub-quiz team, roping in sister Heather and her spouse Charlie for the latter. When not preparing for her flamenco contest, Heather is more concerned with getting pregnant, while her brother Martin and his wife Michelle are overrun with offspring. Kevin's conceit loses his team the quiz and its prize money, so he steals from the pub till to fund his son Nathan's rugby trip to France, ashamed to tell wife Sarah he is to be made redundant, though she finds out anyway. After Pauline's father Frank dies in an accident, Ken's blank reaction propels her, inspired by a Dylan Thomas poem in a book given her by Peter, to move in with her sister Rowan and her married lover Tommy.
Rowan gives Pauline a makeover and persuades her to live for herself. Oafish Kevin believes that he can reconcile his parents at his son's birthday party, but Pauline, aware that Ken is too selfish to make his own attempt to win her back, deliberately stays away and gets drunk with Rowan. Heather is single-minded in her desire to win the flamenco contest with partner Ashley but feels insecure when her rival Louise takes a shine to the younger Charlie and gets him to fit her smoke alarm. Heather and Ashley win the competition but, annoyed when Charlie commiserates with Louise, Heather has sex with Ashley. After being confronted by Nathan over the stolen money Kevin leads a delegation to ask Pauline to return home to Ken but she makes it plain that she has had enough of him and goes to the cinema with widowed Peter, rebuffing an irate Ken when he phones her up. Going after her and spying on Rowan's house, Ken meets Tommy's wife Vivienne, who tells him that infidelity is par for the course in a marriage.
Strapped for cash to send Nathan to France, Kevin steals money from a house where a woman has died, but it is discovered and he is arrested. Thanks to Nathan returning the money to the pub, no action is taken over the first theft, but he is cautioned for the second; he loses his job and the respect of his children and Sarah. Rowan's granddaughter Scarlett, anxious to track down the mother who abandoned her as a child, is optimistic when she finds a note from her at Frank's grave. Heather discovers that she is pregnant at last, but she's unsure whether the father is Charlie or the besotted Ashley. Telling herself it is her husband, she announces to Ashley that their friendship is at an end. Ken unsuccessfully feigns illness to win Pauline back, but when he genuinely does his back in falling from a trampoline, she is unconcerned and goes on a date with Peter--and discovers that she is only one of several women he is seeing. When Heather tells her about her father's accident, Pauline returns to see him--briefly.
Scarlett tracks down her mother Emma; when she discovers that Emma has married again, has another child, and has no maternal feelings for Scarlett, she is grateful to Rowan for acting like a real mother. Sarah is angry with her foolish husband as he puts organizing a family barbecue above job-hunting; Peter shows up to the event and patches things up with Pauline while Martin announces that he will be a househusband because Michelle can earn more in the lawyers' office than he can as a teacher. Heather realizes that Ashley is her baby's father but determines to let Charlie believe that he is. Rowan argues with Tommy as he will not leave Vivienne to be her full-time cohabitee. Tommy takes advice from Ken, who takes him to Rowan's house at 2AM, where Tommy's romantic outpourings lead her to be content with sharing him.
As Michelle returns to work, Martin finds juggling his househusband duties with his writing aspirations difficult but makes a friend in young nanny Alice, who makes him long for his single, student days. Michelle is unimpressed, but after a mishap at the baths with their eldest daughter, the couple reconcile. Meanwhile, Heather tells Ashley she wishes she had met him before she knew Charlie; and Kevin is saved from total unemployment when Sarah speaks up for him at his disciplinary tribunal. Pressurized by their sons, Pauline and Ken attend marriage guidance, but the only thing they agree on is the ineptitude of their counselor; and Pauline goes on another date with Peter.
When Pauline Paradise decides that she has had enough of her immediate family, she decides to move in with her sister, who has a decidedly more unconventional life.