[1] It starred Robert Lindsay as Walter Henry "Wolfie" Smith,[2] a young Marxist[3] "urban guerrilla" in Tooting, south London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara.

[4] Wolfie is a reference to the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who used the pseudonym "Citizen Smith" in order to evade capture by the Dublin Castle administration.

Wolfie dresses in a stereotypical fashion for rebellious students of the period: logoed T-shirt, denim jeans, Afghan coat, and black beret.

It has been claimed that the "Tooting Popular Front" — fictionally based near to writer John Sullivan's childhood home of Balham — was partly inspired by a real-life fellow-South London far-left group, the Brixton-based Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.

[8] The opening titles of each episode of the first two series always began with Wolfie emerging from Tooting Broadway Underground station, followed by a shot of him kicking a can across a bridge until he is in close up, accompanied by a background rendition of the socialist anthem The Red Flag.

They always ended with him shouting "Power to the People", resulting in awkward consequences such as waking a sleeping baby or causing a vehicle to crash.

Series 4 had a new title sequence, which began with Tucker's van driving past Tooting Broadway tube station with "The Revolution is Back" painted on it.

From episode three, "Abide with Me", Wolfie Smith (Robert Lindsay) lives, with his religious, teetotal friend Ken Mills (Mike Grady), in a flat in the house of his girlfriend's family — Shirley Johnson (Cheryl Hall, at the time Lindsay's wife); her affable but naïve mother, Florence, who mistakenly calls Wolfie "Foxy"; and her strict, right-wing father, Charlie, who disapproves of Smith's lifestyle and refers to him as a "flaming yeti" or "Chairman Mao".

Other regular characters in the series are the other "urban guerrillas": Tucker (married to the ever-pregnant but never-seen June); Speed, the TPF's Warlord, and his girlfriend Desiree; and local gangster publican Harry Fenning (played by Stephen Greif), who refers to Wolfie as "Trotsky".

He and the gang attempt to kidnap the new MP from a victory celebration, only to mistakenly capture Harry Fenning (who was leaving the Conservative Club during the occasion) instead (Episode 6 - "The Hostage").

"The Glorious Day", which Wolfie had always been plotting, comes at the end of the third series, in an episode of the same name, in which the Tooting Popular Front "liberate" a Scorpion tank and use it to invade the Houses of Parliament, only to find the place empty, owing to a parliamentary recess.

During the TPF's "annual manoeuvres" on Salisbury Plain, Wolfie, Ken, Tucker and Speed decide to camp down after an evening of heavy drinking; unbeknownst to them, they are in the middle of a military live firing area.