Paddy Gargan, landlord of the Greyhound pub, bans Calum Miller for smoking, antagonizing the boy's father Tom, a dodgy business-man who nonetheless subsidizes the pub's soccer team and threatens to pulverize Paddy if the ban is not lifted by the next afternoon. Because of Tom's support for them, the football team will not lend Paddy supportive muscle and Paddy is indeed beaten to a pulp. But come evening he scores a moral victory, resulting in the bullied Calum and his mother walking out on Tom Miller.

Dee is a divorcee with two little boys. Mark is a plumber, also a single parent,with a daughter,who comes out to replace her ancient heating system. They date and he introduces her to his parents, Nessa and Joe. Nessa is lovely but Joe knows Dee because she works as a prostitute to help make ends meet and he has seen her professionally. He tells her to leave Mark, which she does,but the truth comes out into the open and the two men fight. Ultimately Dee gives up the oldest profession for domesticity with Mark and the kids.

Young Nick Calshaw returns from fighting the war in Afghanistan with half his face terribly scarred due to a female suicide bomber. His family and schoolteacher girlfriend Gemma are horrified but try to act normally for his sake. However,he fails to get his old job back and feels people stare at him. After causing a scene in public he admits to his best friend that he should have shot the suicide bomber but failed to because she had a baby with her. As a result some other lads were killed and he was disfigured. Following a row with Gemma he deliberately steps in front...

drivers, barks at the African staff in the kitchen where he is head chef and walks out of a blind date with a black woman. It is then ironic that he becomes a hero for saving Anna, a 7-year-old Polish girl, from a house fire - the more ironic because the real saviour was Duffy, his friend, who dare not own up because he is on invalidity benefit. Friendship with Anna's mother Olenka softens Kieran's outlook on immigrants and, by the time Olenka and Anna return to Poland, he has changed for the better.

Shay Ryan is an alcoholic following an armed robbery in the bookies' where he worked. One day ex-girlfriend Madeleine tells him he has a son aged sixteen, Otto, who wants to see him, and he is ecstatic, though when Otto turns out to have Down's Syndrome, he initially rejects him. Having lost his lodgers and his job because of his drinking Shay sees Otto as a motivation for staying sober but it is very hard and he hits rock bottom, being rescued from living on the street by kindly neighbour Nick. Madeleine has given him six months to get off the drink. If he can ...

Eddie McEvoy is annoyed when wife Margie opts to spend time with her abusive father after he has suffered a stroke, leaving him and his young son at home. Having lost his driving licence he now works on the phones at Alpha-Zero Cabs, along with lonely Sandra, whose broken window he mends and who brings lunches for him, pitying his lack of domesticity. Being a kindly - if weak - soul, unable to say 'No' to a needy person, he ends up in bed with Sandra, unfortunately on the night Margie comes home early. His feeling that he must come clean with his wife has unhappy ...