Season 1
13 episodes
51 min. per episode
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A determined matriarch battles wartime struggles, uniting her fractured family while confronting heart-wrenching choices and unexpected betrayals.
Episodes
The adult children of the Ashton Family are preparing a surprise party for their parents, Edwin and Jean. The atmosphere is cheerful, but some underlying tensions within the family pop up now and then, and then there is the threat of a war that seems to be coming. Through his marriage 30 years ago Edwin shifted from working-class to middle-class, but at the cost of losing his self-respect. All these years he has been in the hands of his brother-in-law, Sefton Briggs, who rules the printing works where Edwin is employed, and even owns the house where Edwin and Jean live. The post as manager of the works is now vacant. Edwin is the obvious candidate for this position, but instead Sefton places his own son, Tony, there. This also dashes the hope of Edwin's eldest son, David, of getting a job at the works. David is tormented by not being able to earn enough money to maintain his wife Sheila and their two children without financial support by his parents. When all other possibilities have failed, he finally finds one solution: to join the RAF.
August 1938. The family is dismayed when Philip decides to return to Spain to fight the fascists.
June 1939. The threat of war, conscription and social issues contribute to the tensions at Margaret's wedding.
August 1939. There are anxieties about the evacuation of children, and an unplanned pregnancy.
December 1939. Everyone adjusts to new roles during the 'Phony War', but Margaret's problems with her mother-in-law come to a head when John has unexpected leave.
The lower middle class Ashton family of the city of Liverpool deal with life on the home front during the Second World War.