White Heat

Episode 1

The Past Is a Foreign Country

58 mins

Charlotte Pugh returns for a will-reading to the house where she lived as a student. She recalls how she first arrived as a tenant in 1965 with art student Lilly, earnest Geordie Alan, homely Orla, Jamaican immigrant Victor and closet gay Jay. Alan is sure that Jack, the loud-mouthed son of the house owner and technically the landlord, has chosen them as a social experiment as they represent different types. Lilly's parents want her to return home to run a family shop and she is given confidence by Alan after she refuses whilst Orla is rarely in and confides in Jay that she has taken on hotel work to send money back to her parents in Belfast. Jack's anti-establishment rant on the death of Winston Churchill causes ill-feeling with his tenants and a visit from his father, a Conservative MP, is anything but reconciliatory. At a house-warming party Charlotte sleeps with Jack after rounding on her visiting father whom she has found out is having an affair. Orla stumbles upon Jay's secret when she catches him with a man and he begs her to say nothing.