[2] The eldest son, Edward (played by Glyn Owen during the first series and by Patrick O'Connell for the remainder of the show's run), prepares to take over the running of the business, only to find that his father has left equal shares to his two other sons, Brian (Richard Easton), a dull accountant and David (Robin Chadwick), a young graduate - and to his mistress and secretary Jennifer Kingsley (Jennifer Wilson).

Storylines throughout the series dealt with plans to expand the business into an international concern, coupled with more family-orientated plots as Edward and Jennifer fall in love and marry.

Other prominent characters included Robert Hammond's hard-faced widow and the mother of the three brothers, Mary (Jean Anderson), who is determined to continue exercising her own influence over her family, Brian's shrewish wife Ann (Hilary Tindall) and David's girlfriend then wife Jill (Gabrielle Drake).

Later characters to be introduced included the loathsome[3] financial whizkid, merchant banker and proto-yuppie Paul Merroney (Colin Baker), April Winter (Liza Goddard), who became Merroney's wife, and Jane Maxwell (Kate O'Mara), the tough female boss of an air freight business.

His elevation from the shop floor to a key member of the board was met with resistance from both ends, and the subsequent decades allow this to be seen in context, one way that management and workers may work closer together to maintain the company's competitive outlook.

The character of Paul Merroney can in hindsight be viewed as a prototype for the new Thatcher-inspired generation of corporate go-getters.