Synopsis

Episodic telling of twenty years of the Gibbons, a working class family, in their South London rental house from 1919 to 1939, namely from just after the conclusion of WWI to just before the start of WWII. Beyond the profound effect of world events, such as these wars, on their lives, and the ebbs and flows of general western society in all aspects, husband and wife Frank and Ethel Gibbons have to hold their family together through other more personal events. Besides their immediate family, their household consists of her mother, Mrs. Flint, who is always feigning that she is on her deathbed, and his spinster sister Sylvia Gibbons, who clings to odd notions of life as her only sense of independence, the two not getting along in seeing the other an intrusion on the household. And their three offspring, while generally getting along, are a disparate group. Only son Reg is easily swayed, especially by his best friend Sam Leadbitter, who wants to see social justice at all cost. While she secretly loves Sam, eldest daughter Vi, as the level headed one, doesn't like Sam's influence on Reg and what that means for Reg's life. Youngest daughter Queenie hates their "common life" and will do almost anything to escape it, meaning that she will not marry Billy Mitchell, who has always loved her regardless and who she has loved in her own way despite he not being her picture of husband material. Billy, a career sailor in the British Navy, is the son of their next door neighbor, Frank's best friend and "Johnnie Walker and soda" drinking buddy Bob Mitchell, the two who originally met on the battlefield in 1915 fighting for the British in different regiments. —Huggo

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