TV adaptation of Zadie Smith's award-winning novel that charts the lives of two wartime friends and their families through the cultural 'melting pot' of 1970s England and into the 1990s. On the verge of suicide, 47-year-old Archie Jones (Philip Davis)'s life is turned around when he meets and marries the much younger Clara (Naomie Harris), a Jamaican girl whose mother is a devout Jehovah's Witness. Meanwhile, Archie's old wartime colleague Samad (Om Puri) is finding it hard adjusting to life in England with his young family. The film follows both families over the coming years, as tensions, politics and freedoms of all kinds make lasting marks on everyone.