The 1950s :- GP Tom Gilder and his family leave Manchester to attend a wedding in Tom's native village Ormston, where his father Arthur is the doctor. Arthur's nurse Linda is marrying local copper Len, who wakes up nude in the centre of the village after a raucous stag night. The train carrying wedding guests breaks down and Linda has second thoughts but the wedding goes off well though one of the guests collapses.Father and son work well as a team to treat him and Arthur, who mistrusts the N.H.S. and is considering retirement, is pleased when Tom wins over his wife Deborah and agrees to take over his father's practice,with Arthur as consultant in charge of the cottage hospital.

Tom is appalled by the informal way Arthur runs his practice but both men combine to try and talk sense into their cleaner Edie McClure, sister of pub landlady Phyllis, whom Edie disdains for giving up on her marriage. Edie has a weak heart but is determined,against doctors' advice, to see through her seventh pregnancy as she has six daughters and is desperate for a son. Matters are taken out of her hands when she miscarries but reconciliation with Phyllis follows. Eddie,the hunky garage mechanic ,asks for advice from scrap-dealer Jean about dating Tom's teenaged daughter Helen but Jean misunderstands and assumes he wants to date her whilst Tom's son Michael gets revenge on a bullying schoolmaster.

With no cash available to pay builders the villagers rally to get the cottage hospital up to scratch before an N.H.S. inspector arrives to approve it.Despite being told the post is cursed Deborah becomes chair of the newly revived parish council and, whilst the villagers stall the inspector,who has arrived early, she tries to get cash from bombastic mill-owner Horace Trubshaw. He agrees providing Tom will pick three workers for him to sack,which Tom refuses. However he is 'persuaded' to provide funds when his put-upon chief clerk Jack Stubbs exposes him for embezzlement. Jack's son,who has diphtheria, goes missing and the inspector - who has been generally humiliated by the plan to stall him - is so impressed by the community's response to locate the little boy that he approves the hospital. Eddie finds he has somehow asked Jean AND Helen to the pictures and is dumped by both of them.

Tom is perplexed by carpenter Bert Cartwright's hostility to doctors until he learns that Bert blames Arthur for the death of his little boy years earlier. When Annie,Bert's wife, falls ill, Bert resists her hospitalisation but ,in her delirium, she mistakes Michael for her son who 'watches over her' and agrees to go, saving her life. Michael finds ancient coins in the woods but when the Reverend Brewer and station master Wilf start digging for treasure they unearth an unexploded bomb. Fortunately ex-munitions worker Phyllis knows how to defuse it - or thinks she does,but at least the remainder of the coins are unearthed.

Swaggering Frank Cosgrove, older brother of Len,injures himself driving his train when he stops to avoid a dog. He is a rude,reluctant patient but Tom discovers his twin secrets - he has diabetes,which is affecting his sight, and he is not the war hero he has always claimed to be. However he rises to the occasion when Tom's daughter Catherine gets trapped beneath a car and Len also proves himself to be a hero,apprehending a smooth con man who has robbed Jean. Tom bans his father from the hospital for using it to store his explosive home brew but there is a reconciliation at a family christening after the villagers have turned out to rescue Catherine.

Neville Manly, the shy new NHS inspector declares the cottage hospital the official annexe to Rattenbury General. To celebrate, Deborah revives the Flower of the Valley beauty contest, to be judged by Neville, who finds himself under siege from the competitive entrants. Arthur visits stroppy Sally Waddington, the local telephone operator,who has not set foot outdoors for ten months,since her mother was put in a home,suffering from dementia. She believes she too is going mad but she is agoraphobic.When Jean breaks her ankle Wilf rings for help but the ancient exchange, already faulty, blows up and Sally has to face her fears to fetch Arthur personally. In hospital next to Jean she tells Arthur, who is feeling side-lined, how much Tom appreciates him, as well as encouraging Jean to enter the beauty contest where the besotted Neville declares her the winner, restoring her self-confidence. When the celebrations end Arthur discovers that Tom and Deborah have moved him into their house.