Francis Urquarth, unscrupulous but cunning Conservative politician, managed to become the British prime minister and crush all significant opposition. But his survival on the top is threatened by a liberal monarch and, added to this, Urquhart is engaging in an affair with a pollster and seriously getting on the wrong side of his oldest friend and Chief Whip/Party Chairman Tim Stamper, who has incriminating evidence concerning Urquhart's involvement in the death of journalist Mattie Storin. One of the most absorbing and addictive British TV dramas of the 1990s.