Plot
Young flatmates Chrissy and Jo find a stranger, student chef Robin Tripp, asleep in their bath the morning after the farewell party for their departed flatmate Eleanor. They are taken with Robin when they realise his culinary skills are far superior to their own. Apparently "Eleanor didn't leave the recipe for toast."
Chrissy and Jo are both from regional England and moved out on their own to live in London. They both work for the same firm. When he meets the two women, Robin has been in London two days, having moved from Southampton to attend college. The women are unimpressed with Gabrielle (Helen Fraser), a pushy young woman who arrives hoping to move in to Eleanor's room. Learning that Robin has been staying at the YMCA they easily convince him to move in.
Robin moves in on a platonic basis, and Chrissy tells the landlord George Roper that Robin is gay to pre-empt objections to the mixed-sex living arrangement. In the second episode, Robin's true sexuality becomes known to Mildred. Mildred openly flirts with Robin at every opportunity. Robin frequently acts in a flirtatious manner toward Chrissy and Jo. The women have no romantic interest and spurn his mild advances, and adapt to his presence in the flat.
Landlord George Roper, in truth a sub-letting landlord placed by the council, is a bumbling, accident-prone and gullible man under the thumb of his domineering and sexually-frustrated wife Mildred. Mildred takes out her frustrations with George's lack of class and sexual inadequacy by making suggestive remarks to Robin and frequently siding with the tenants against George.
Robin's friend Larry, a lovable rogue, appears in two first season episodes. In the second season, he moves into the loft apartment and is a frequent source of trouble. Another occasional cast member is George's friend, dim schemer Jerry.
Robin's brother Norman Tripp (Norman Eshley) appears through the final season, and starts a romance with Chrissy. Norman Eshley had a previous guest role in the series two years earlier playing a different character, and was also a member of the main cast of the spin-off series George and Mildred in which, he played the Ropers' snobbish neighbour Jeffrey Fourmile.
Read more about this topic: Man About The House
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)