Bob and Margaret

While Bob and Margaret are sleeping, the local criminals, Beany and Boney clear their house - TV, video, microwave and electric toothbrush all go. The police arrive but are wholly uninterested in yet another petty burglary. Bob has a big plan to inflate the claim to compensate for his "pain and suffering". He convinces Margaret that the whole insurance business is geared to paying out big. Insurance companies make huge profits on the basis of crime existing and that if Bob and Margaret don't contribute to the statistics, people will not feel the need to have insurance and so everybody will lose out in the end. A scary meeting with the loss adjuster goes well when he surmises that a childless middle aged couple would obviously have expensive hi-fi's and TV's. "What else is going to bring joy into your lives" he asks?While Beany and Boney flog their acquisitions at a car boot sale, Bob and Margaret are on a shopping spree, replacing their lost things with top-of the line goods. That night, Beany and Boney spot the empty boxes piled by Bob and Margaret's dustbins. "Better than the crap we got last time" they muse. We fade to black over the tinkling of broken glass.

Bob's business is booming, and when Margaret chips a tooth (Bob having inadvertently filled her bowl with dog biscuits instead of breakfast cereal.) Bob tells Margaret that he is unable to give her an appointment for sometime. Unexpectedly, a new young dentist, Dr. Stanway, opens up a swanky new practice across the street from Bob. Bob panics and threatens a dental fight to the last root canal; until Dr. Stanway pops over for a friendly visit. He manages to charm Bob, his receptionist Dorothy and Bobs patients, who desert Bob in droves for the air conditioned splendor of Dr. Steinways office. Even his faithful receptionist, Dorothy, leaves Bob for his new rival. If that was not enough, Bob spies a sheepish Margaret coming out of Dr. Stanway's office. Appalled, he rushes home to confront Margaret. An emotional tussle ensues with Bob effectively accusing Margaret of the worst infidelity. Furious, Margaret storms upstairs and locks herself in the low.Penny is hired to replace Dorothy and while trying to justify to Margaret this seemingly irrational choice, Bob spots Dr. Stanway being hustled out of his practice by a group of burly policemen. We learn that he is a fraud who has been putting his female patients under anesthetic, and molesting them. Margaret has obviously heard the news too. The last shot reveals Margaret laying unconscious on the floor.

Bob and Margaret find themselves at loose ends one evening when, to their dismay, they find that there is absolutely nothing to watch on TV. Discussing, and swiftly dismissing, all forms of cultural activity, they get on to the omnipresent theme: do they or do not they want children. As a result, they decide to stay in with a romantic video, candle-lit pizza and.... After an embarrassing moment at the porno section of the video shop, they decide on a worthy epic. No sooner is the pizza delivered, than they get a call from Henry and Judy, asking them over for dinner. They are not able to say no and reluctantly change the evening plans. Bob, annoyed to have wasted the rental fee on the video, arrives with Margaret to a chaotic household of a screaming baby, overt breast-feeding, much burping and vomiting and smelly nappies. Dinner is served amongst the chaos and frank discussions about Judy's trying birth and baby Morris incessant bouts of colic. Bob and Margaret refuse an invitation to watch a video of Morris' birth. Margarets head swimming with thoughts of breached birth and spicy red spaghetti, finally faints, cutting the evening short.Back home, Margaret's headache is subsiding. Bob's romantic advances are rejected on the grounds that babies are maybe not such a good idea. Bob sets the alarm for 5 a.m. giving him enough time to view the video that has, after all, been paid for. Unfortunately he falls asleep in front of the TV. All is not lost however, as the dogs watch the movie with dewy eyes.

Bob and Margaret, concerned at the amount they are spending in take away food and expensive local food shops, decide on an expedition to the Super Save Shopatropolis in Croydon. They take the opportunity to visit the huge recycling depot on the premises. Margaret dutifully sorts out coloured glass while Bob leans back on the car and muses that recycling is no more than a panacea to serve the public's need to feel good about the environment. The shop itself is massive and finding a parking space within walking distance is no mean feat. Once in the store Bob and Margaret bump into many strange people. A disgruntled freezer manager, reduced to dressing in a penguin outfit to hand out fish finger samples, a stranger who lays claim to Bob and Margaret's nearly-full trolley and the local criminals, Beany and Boney.Later, Margaret challenges an aggressive woman's approach to disciplining her hyper-active child, resulting in flying accusations and a near punch-up that is resolved by the stores own Conflict Resolution Officer. He offers the woman a discount of 10p off the cost of a family therapist for every pound spent in the store. While Bob and Margaret queue at the check-out, Beany and Boney are having trouble paying for their own acquisitions, since all their stolen credit cards bear either female or improbable ethnic names. They manage to placate the dim till woman with some counterfeit notes bearing a picture of the Spice Girls. Bob and Margaret are the last customers to leave the store. They are exhausted and too tired to cook; so they decide on Chinese take away.

Bob and Margaret, with some trepidation, deliver their dogs, William and Elizabeth, to the kennels. With Bob and Margaret home packing, we cut back to the kennels, which have taken on the aura of Bates Motel run by a short, fat drill sergeant under the thumb of his mysteriously unseen mother. Bob and Margaret over-sleep and arrive late at the airport. Bob is a nervous flier so he takes a sleeping pill. Suddenly, passengers disguised as a nun, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk reveal themselves as armed terrorists, hi jacking the plane to Cuba. They commit a fair bit of carnage, while trying to demand a ransom from the President of the United States. They have trouble getting past a phone operator at the White House so the terrorists start throwing people out of the plane. Bob awakes, and we realize that the preceding was his drug-induced nightmare.While Bob and Margaret enjoy themselves on the beach, we cut back to the kennels, where things are not as they had first appeared....

Bob's brother Peter is a successful chef who has a cooking show producing in India. Peter and his producer wife Rosie invite Bob and Margaret over for a lavish farewell dinner. Over cognac and cigars Bob's brother explains that in the event of anything awful happening in India his will leaves Bob and Margaret a large sum of money, the house, the jag and the jeep... during the course of a very drunken evening, something is mentioned about looking after the children as well. Bob and Margaret are a bit hazy about how long Peters trip is, but when the children arrive and issue their Uncle and Aunt with a list of their needs including addresses of schools, doctors and shoe sizes, it finally sinks in- the children are there for an extended visit. Charlotte and Gerald are difficult and Bob takes to praying for his brother's safe return from India. Watching Peter's first live broadcast, they are distraught to see him collapse on air. Fearing the most dreadful tropical disease, Bob and Margaret fear that they have suddenly become parents to two precocious children and are desperate to find out what has happened.All ends well as Peter's illness turns out to be food poisoning. They return home and take the children back and out of Bob and Margaret's hair.

Bob and Margaret have been invited to Neil and Moira's for dinner, or so they think.Bob and Margaret are offered some wine, and demolish a small bowl of peanuts. When their hosts suggest a board game, the penny finally drops, No dinner! The game involves decision-making on moral matters. Bob's first question, whether he would agree to visit a massage parlor if in Thailand on business, sets the cat among the pigeons. Things go from bad to worse, with accusations flying. Finally it is Margaret's turn: "Neil. You are invited to friends' for dinner several times, and always given beautiful, carefully prepared food. Eventually, feeling slightly guilty, you invite those friends back to your house. Do you give them a nice dinner, similar to what you've received from them, or do you give them some stale nuts and a glass of vinegar disguised as wine?" She then accuses them of being selfish, rude and dull, and storms out. Bob, left there alone, nervously thanks them for the evening and follows Margaret out the door.Later, as they devour a Chinese take-away, Bob and Margaret thrash out one more moral dilemma.

While listening to the radio, Bob observes his charmless young assistant Penny, inspiring him to recite odes about youth and innocence. Bob over hears on the radiophone in, a teenage caller, in love with her boss, and hears her being encouraged to open her heart to him. Penny comes in to Bob and starts beating about the bush. Bob thinking about the phone in show, is surprised when Penny states "more money, or I go to work at a florist shop". Bob stands firm, insisting that he rescued Penny from the dole queue. Penny insists that she was not even in the queue, she was waiting with a friend, and storms off to work at the florist. Panic stricken without his "right hand", he calls Margaret, who agrees to take time off from the verucca epidemic that is assailing her chiropody practice, to come and help him.While Penny alienates the florist's customers with her trademark brusque manner, Bob and Margaret are bickering about the way Margaret is answering the phone, how she keeps her hair, and whether or not she is passing the correct tool to Bob. The surgery is chaotic, with appointments messed up and arguing patients. Bob entices Penny back with a pay-raise and order is restored in all three establishments. His "let's make up" dinner invitation to Margaret is not all it might be, but his poems are now dedicated to his wife.

The time for the annual dental convention has come. Bob is not keen on going when he sees that a colleague from his student days, Bernard Wiggins, a "loud mouthed big shot", is a featured speaker. Bob asks Penny to make him an appointment to get his abscess looked at. Ignorant of any previous relationship, Penny books Bob in to see Bernard at his high tech Mayfair practice, complete with a cappuccino machine and multimedia entertainment. Bernard is appalled to hear that Bob is not going to the convention, and tries to convince him to go explaining that they need another dentist to speak on The Small Inefficient Dental Practice. He persuades Bob to do this by bribing him with free executive hotel and flights.Margaret can't wait to fly first class and have a nice time in a fancy hotel, but once they arrive at the convention Bob can do nothing but worry about his speech. All his worrying is for nothing. Bob's unintentional fumbling on stage is taken as wit and his speech is a huge success. In the context of all the jokes he explains the positive value of small practices like his own and compares it to the pretentious, high tech practices of certain dentists. He comes home a hero. Bob returns to Bernard Wiggins to complete the treatment on his abscess. The situation is strained and Bob is somewhat embarrassed. Bernard is only interested in retribution!

Margaret fears that her relationship with Bob is getting stale after they have a petty argument. Bob tries to make amends by suggesting that they have a special celebration at the fabulous Cheddar Gorge View Hotel, their honeymoon spot. In the middle of the night Bob receives a call from Melvin, his distant cousin from Canada. He and his wife Cookie is coming over to Europe and wants to stay with Bob and Margaret for a few days.A few days later, a romantic evening is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Cookie and Melvin. The two Canadian visitors are friendly and outgoing, but difficult to tolerate for more than a few minutes. Their presence is a big intrusion and when Bob tries to explain that they are going to Cheddar for their anniversary, Kitty and Melvin misunderstand and get excited about joining Bob and Margaret on their trip. Bob and Margaret's holiday seem to be ruined by Cookie and Melvin's intrusiveness and annoying conversation. Things take a turn when Cookie falls off the edge of the Cheddar Gorge and has to be winced free by an emergency helicopter. This tragedy has a positive side as Bob and Margaret are finally left alone

It's Halloween. It is also Bob father's birthday and his mother wants to celebrate by visiting his grave. Bob is not comfortable with this and tries to get out of it, but can't because his brother Peter is away making another one of his cooking shows. Bob receives a call from a woman who tells him that her husband, an old school friend of Bobs, has died while repairing his roof. Bob cannot remember this man and, as he hates funeral's anyway, does not want to go. He relents under pressure from Margaret. At the funeral he finds that virtually no one at the funeral remembers the fellow either. When they leave, they notice a man sitting alone. The man ends up getting a lift from Bob and Margaret and talks to them about the fragility of life and coping with death. It turns out that he is not just an upset mourner, but an insurance salesman looking for customers. Somehow, Bob finds wisdom in his patter and learns to accept his mortality better through the reality of statistical probability. Bob does go to visit his father's grave, which is now a big supermarket, and manages to come to terms with his troubled relationship with his father.

In this story of neighbourhood social angst, Bob is having a complex burglar alarm installed by Graham, a sad, lonely man whose confidence is lifted immeasurably by this rare sale to Bob. That evening, new neighbours move in next door to Bob and Margaret, who decide to make a point of being friendly with them. The new neighbours turn out to be friendly Americans, Kitty and Larry. Kitty is French Canadian and Larry is a TV antenna's salesman from Miami. They have two dysfunctional children and a dog who has been in quarantine for too long. Bob and Margaret, intimidated at first, quickly warm up to the family and make a point of inviting them out for dinner, to a horrible American style theme restaurant where nothing goes well. To make matters worse when Bob and Margaret return home from their horrible dinner, the new alarm is ringing and the whole neighbourhood is out in force, screaming and arguing.