COMEDY DRAMA SERIAL 4 X 60 MINS

Cambridge 1977: While the UK celebrates the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Punk scourges the nation and two worlds collide as a failing British Rail sandwich factory run by a collection of hopeless misfits is hired by the director of a psychiatric hospital threatened with closure to cater a summer fete. 

Miles from the spires, cloistered quadrangles and the punts is a rundown factory churning out the vile, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches that some say brought British Rail to its knees. Bill Suckling, the porn addicted proprietor hasn’t paid any taxes for years and when the bailiffs show up with a writ he suffers a massive heart attack, leaving his long-suffering wife Gloria to cope with the aftermath. Nearby, in a village just outside the ancient bastion of elitism and privilege, Dr Nigel Kennard, the director of Fenbourne Psychiatric Hospital has been ordered to rehabilitate its reputation as a modern day Bedlam, empty the beds and slash his budget or face closure. 

Putting Eddie, a suspected malingerer, Lazlo, a football hooligan, and Ruby, a “moral imbecile” at the top of his list of bed blockers he decides on a Jubilee themed summer fete to demonstrate his newfound commitment to community care- then cheaps out by hiring The Factory to do the catering. 

Gloria’s only hope of convincing the Court that The Factory deserves a second chance is to enlist the help of Mona, Suckling’s felonious number two, Jacko, the severely autistic ‘fridge manager’ and Nikki, a drug addled punk poet, recently expelled from Trinity College. 

Kennard and Gloria discover to their horror that their employees and inmates are more closely connected than they could have imagined, but have no choice other than to pin all hopes for survival on the success of the fete- only to find them dashed when the sandwiches are mysteriously laced with LSD, with catastrophic consequences. 

As each character confronts the truth of their own lives they learn more about themselves, each other and their ideas about mental illness and sanity than any of them had bargained for.