At the deathbed of his used-to-be militant mother an older man looks back at his childhood, when he was in love with his sensual aunt Coleta.

In this period drama series, the young, unexperienced Catholic priest Erik Odekerke -who keeps a diary, and is once described as a (pastoral) 'sheperd dog', gets his first assignment, as kapelaan -literally 'chaplain', but in Dutch still in assistant to the parish's curate- in a mining town in Dutch Limburg.

Adaptation for television of the stage play of the same name by the Dutch playwright Herman Heijermans. When lodger Eva Bonheur lends her landlady Mop two thousand pounds and Mop is unable to repay her, Bonheur gets control of the house and decides to put Mop, her husband Jasper and their daughter Miep out on the street.