When Mary meets gorgeous Monty, blue-eyed heir to a stately pile, romantic bliss seems assured. But after the roof falls in and the pictures are flogged, happiness is as thin on the ground as the worn-out carpet.

Beth exchanges the delis and designer shops of Holland Park for simple weekends at the bijou country cottage her banker husband’s bonus has just bought. They only Offered a little over the asking price – so why don’t the locals like them?

Über-WAG Alexandra needs a country mansion – fast. Her footballer boyfriend is being transferred and time is running out. There must be a Hello!-tastic pile with spa, gym, pool, champagne bar and underground parking for five four-wheel drives somewhere?

Morag is the terror of the village. She’s an interfering eco-boot, a Stalin against slug pellets, who wears hemp trousers and makes her own ultra-high-bran version of Weetabix.

Ambitions clash when the village launches an allotment project. Morag wants to plough hers with a horse; Beth buys a gleaming mini-tractor; Alexandra arrives with Chanel spade and accompanying film crew, while Mary endures the advice of the
local champion vegetable-grower.

All this is tense enough. But when the whole village becomes dramatically embroiled in a bitter struggle over sex, power and money, it threatens to blight more than everyone’s carrots.

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