Several bourgeois friends planning to get together for dinner experience a succession of highly unusual occurrences that interfere with their expected dining enjoyment.

This series was set in a fictional Yorkshire town and based on the books by David Nobbs, the creator of Reginald Perrin and Henry Pratt. Each episode took place at a different social function (a "do") and followed the changing lives of two families, the working-class Simcocks and the middle-class Rodenhursts, together with their respective friends, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, and Neville Badger.

Natalie and Ross struggle to stay in the middle class in a Melbourne suburb, with their likable son and daughter, 12 and 7. Their lives are upended one August day when Natalie faints during a routine medical checkup: it's an aneurysm followed by major surgery, convalescence, and a doctor's advice to avoid heavy lifting, straining on the toilet, stifled sneezes, and orgasms. Over the next year, we watch the family in vignettes, one each month: domestic frustrations, a tempting colleague, Christmas, a pet fish, a holiday, a church choir and conversations about God, a chicken hawk, a birthday party, football games, and fears that another aneurysm is just a sneeze away.

The Minivers, an English "middle-class" family experience life in the first months of World War II. While dodging bombs, the Miniver's son courts Lady Beldon's granddaughter. A rose is named after Mrs. Miniver and entered in the competition against Lady Beldon's rose.

The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humourous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems and joys in their own way.