After an awkward break-up some months ago, Jonathan and Carla — now married to the producer of a Crimewatch-like television show — unite to investigate a serial killer who wears a Davy Crockett hat and kills people named after flowers.

Reverend Granger is assigned as the Vicar of the rural parish of Dibley, but she is not quite what the villagers expected.

Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite control the media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme which will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a remote island. In this respect, the play is often cited as having anticipated the craze for reality television.