A group of modern shopkeepers and their families live and trade through six key eras of history. They begin their journey in the 1870s, when the high street was born.
The shopkeepers move into the Edwardian era, where the butcher, the baker, the grocer and the ironmonger are joined by a dressmaker. Together they must provide a modern town with the exceptional service and luxuriant shop displays worthy of the Edwardians.
The shopkeepers move into the 1930s, where nostalgia boosts sales for the grocers, while the dressmaker attempts to sell thirties glamour to the town. A fierce rivalry builds between the grocers and the butchers, undermining the community spirit of the high street.
The families are challenged to trade for a week against the backdrop of the Second World War. Rationing, coupons and identity cards bring home the difficult realities of life on the home front for the grocers, while the dressmaker and the blacksmith try to convince the residents of Shepton Mallet of the merits of 1940s-style recycling. However, the retailers face stiff competition as stock shortages mean their customers could be tempted to turn to the black market for their supplies.
The traders are propelled headlong into the 1960s, a new era for retail that sees each of their businesses undergo radical transformations. The bakers find themselves running a milk bar, and the dressmaker switches professions to become a hairdresser. Meanwhile, the butcher and his son become hardware specialists, and enter into competition with the grocers, whose shop has turned into a self-service paradise along the lines of a modern-day supermarket.
It's the end of the journey for the shopkeepers and their customers as they move into the 1970s.
The Edwardian era pushes the three modern families to their limits. There is a rude awakening for the Polo-playing Meadows family, who take on the role of being an Edwardian working-class family and must cope with the impact of poverty on their lives, as they and their two daughters adapt to a new role as breadwinners. The Taylor family live the lives of their ancestors as an upper-middle-class Edwardian household. Formality and etiquette mean the Taylor family must live very separate lives and mum Adele struggles as her familiar role as wife and working mum is stripped away. Finally, the Golding family are desperately hanging on to their newly acquired social status as a middle-class family, but for dad Ian it is a chance to put his theories on the benefits of discipline into practice
In this episode, the families are put through the mill as they experience family life during the Interwar years. They experience the highs of the "roaring twenties", followed by the lows of the Great Depression and its catastrophic effect on British economy. The Taylor family lead a life of leisure in an upper class household, waited on by servants, a chauffeur and a nanny; but the good times are soon brought to an end with the Wall Street Crash. Living as a working class family, the Meadows start on a high with better pay and working conditions, but are soon forced to resort to desperate measures. Meanwhile, the Golding family are relieved to be relatively unscathed by the economic downturn and spend the era steadily improving their lot. That is, until Ian Golding is presented with some devastating truths about the 1930s lives his ancestors were forced to lead as Jews living in London's East End.
In this episode, the families face life on the home front with Great Britain at war; they pull together to survive and do their bit for the war effort, as well as enduring a night in a bomb shelter; and Susie Meadows finds herself responsible for everyone's safety. The Taylor family are now without servants and, just as Adele finally gets to run her own home, the family is split apart once more as husband Michael is called up for national service and her children are evacuated. With the families in disarray, there is much relief as VE Day arrives, and by the end of the era the close-knit community say goodbye to the Goldings.
In this episode, the families are thrown into the swinging sixties and the street is introduced to a new family, the Hawkes, who are walking in the shoes of their ancestors who arrived as immigrants from the Caribbean. Brother and sister Jonathan and Rachel arrive on Albert Road first, and are shocked by life in the sixties. They discover life in the sixties was a difficult time, with racism, isolation and separation from loved ones taking its toll. The Meadows family follow their ancestors' climb up the social ladder from their traditional working class home in the forties to a sixties middle-class dwelling. All appears well, until sisters Saskia and Genevieve spoil the party with a teenage rebellion. And the twists and turns of the Taylor family tree mean they leave behind the high life they have lived since the 1900s, as they find themselves in the working class house.
In this final episode of the series, Albert Road is transformed once again for family life in the 1970s. Single mum Lisa Rhodes moves in with her two sons, joining the other parents for whom the seventies are all about nostalgia. But as daily life is turned upside down by strikes, the three-day week, power cuts, water shortages and women's liberation, the rose-tinted glasses are off and the parents realise just how tough their own parents had it. With all the mums working, the two dads on Albert Road soon take up the strain at home: Michael Taylor puts on a pinny and cooks chicken kiev, while Phil knuckles down to the housework. As the families living on the street pull together as a community for the penultimate decade, the question to which everyone wants to know the answer is, when do they feel the golden era for the family really was?
