Recently-dumped and on the verge of admitting she'll never make any money doing something she loves, a young artist takes a job in a top London advertising agency and, much to her surprise, after connecting with a disillusioned colleague, starts to enjoy life as a grown-up - and the wild lifestyle that follows; but when the pull of the carefree life she left behind gets in the way of responsibilities, she must learn to behave like an adult, personally and professionally, to hang on to the life and people she's started to fall for.

Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.