In 1860s France, Étienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is clever but uneducated with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at the Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

An actor is playing Claude Debussy in a film about the composer's life, and finds himself identifying with his subject very closely.

Always On Sunday is a bio-pic on Le (Henri) Douanier Rousseau, a French naive painter.

Nicky and his friends find that their youth club is in danger of being flattened to make way for a new office block unless they can come up with £1500 to pay the new owner, the ruthless property tycoon Hamilton Black. To help raise the cash, Nicky records a song and his friends broadcast it via a pirate radio station, touting him as "The Mystery Singer" - the plan works and interest in their up and coming show is heightened by this new but unknown heart-throb. But Nicky has an even bigger secret and one that he cannot share, even with his girlfriend Toni... Hamilton Black is his father.