Sylvia Smith takes care of her ill mother Freda, and too much so if you ask her fiancée Jack Hall. Every time he wants to take her out she declines because of her mother's illness. One night on of Sylvia's brother Tony's fish-and-chips shops is burned down and his wife Gladys is not surprised to learn that it was arson. She is convinced that Jack is the arsonist and the relationship between them does not improve when old Freda Smith dies and leaves everything to Sylvia. Oscar Blaketon gets a visit from his old friend Ursula Donne. She is also an old friend of Lord Ashfordly's and she sticks to him like glue when she meets him again joining him for dinners and to the horse races. She even invites him to join her consortium, which owns hotels all over England. Nurse Bolton gets a job at a hospital and leaves Aidensfield.

Henry Stoddard is released after 15 years in prison for killing a police constable from Ashfordly police station and moves in with his brother Jack. Stoddard has always claimed his innocence although the evidence against him was overwhelming. He says that Oscar Blaketon and Alf Ventress tricked him into confessing to avoid getting hanged. Now somebody is out to get back at both of them. And Peter, the son of the dead constable, has sworn to revenge his father's killing. Aunt Peggy comes across her birth certificate when she has to produce her driver's license after a traffic incident and discovers that she is related to Lord Ashfordly. Phil Bellamy surprises everybody by marrying Debbie Black.

Everybody is shocked over Phil Bellamy's death, and especially his wife Gina cannot believe he is gone. After the funeral she says she has decided to go back to Liverpool to make a clean break from the past. Headquarters has agreed to let PC Mason stay in Aidensfield, and PC Wetherby, who blames himself for Bellamy's death, fills the vacancy at the police station in Ashfordly. A teacher from Brassington School on the moor is found dead in his home after an apparent suicide. From his headmaster Anthony Barlow PC Mason and DS Dawson learn that he suffered from a depression over the death of one of his pupils on a school trip, but Mason is sure something is not right. Unaware that he nearly hit a cyclist with his car old Arthur Chiltern drives on, but the cyclist Dr. Oakley wants him charged with reckless driving. Nurse Cassidy tries to persuade him to drop the charges. She succeeds with something else as well when the handsome doctor asks her out.