Lord Donald and Lady Nancy reside in the magnificent but run-down Longleigh House with James, their mentally disabled adult son. Nancy has fallen seriously ill and Donald is preparing to sell the house to raise enough money to pay for an operation. He arranges for the family nurse, Mary, to take care of Nancy while he leaves to tend to the sale. However, James wants to prove to his father that he can look after his mother on his own and decides to lock Mary out of the house. It isn't long before James starts mixing his mother's pills and forgetting to take his own medication, and as the stress of looking after his mother increases, so too does the severity of his own condition.

Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. Cardale was based on the Staffordshire village of Longnor for the final series, but was previously based in the Derbyshire village of Crich, although certain scenes were filmed at other nearby Derbyshire towns and villages, most notably Matlock, Belper and Ashover.