Kath, a shy young woman, befriends Bob, the reclusive gardener at a seaside hotel where she's getting married. Kath has never come to terms with her mother leaving home when she was eight and that her overbearing father, Ken, never talks about her. Now she is getting married to escape, only to discover that her fiancée, Steve, is completely dominated by Ken as well. Bob is a gentle, eccentric man with a dry sense of humour and a troubled past. He spent a long time in prison and in the years he's worked at the hotel he has never ventured beyond the gardens, which he tends with obsessive care. Kath sparks a connection to an unresolved relationship from Bob's past with a girl called Louise which resonates so strongly that he feels compelled to leave the safety of the hotel and confront his past.
In 1968, Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor, endangers the fate of his family and business, and his own life, blinded by his ambition to compete in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, attempting to become the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the world without making any stopover.
The daily troubles of the people who work in a busy West Midlands Job Centre, and the people who don’t work there, or anywhere else for that matter.