Changes

Rory Blaine, grandson of Lady Sybil Blaine is gay, free, single and loving it, as he tells himself a dozen times a day. He may be middle aged but he's still got it. He's a partner in a successful advertising firm and so, so over having been thrown out of home when he was a teenager; yes, over it – totally and completely. When he hears his grandmother is dying, he decides it's time to remind her (and her considerable wealth) of his existence. The tardy but intensive attention seems to pay off when he's left the ancestral pile. But the stately home wasn't left to him quite in the way that he thought. There are so many strings attached it resembles a marionette: if he wants to keep it he must transform it into the first retirement home for elderly gay gentlemen and he also seems to have acquired his first resident, whether he's wanted or not.

The author presents us with a rich cast of delicious divergence, all having one thing in common: they're all incomplete in some way but they don't all realise. Rory shrugs off his need for roots, family and reciprocated love with a playboy lifestyle. Elspeth Wishart, Rory's old school matron (if there's going to be a film, she's definitely Maggie Smith) needs to be able to belong. Feisty young gardener Dolores Potts comes with a score to settle. For Vic D'Orsay (and many of the other residents) the thing they seek is the thing that we take for granted: the safety in which to be themselves. These elderly are a generation for who, in their youth, living their lives normally was a criminal offence. Loving a life partner could lead to prison and, when that law was repealed, a separation from society caused by a cruel stigma which was just as punitive. Vic himself had spent a singing career as the housewives' favourite idol, full of heterosex appeal. It made him a good living but one at odds with his true self.