The Darling Buds of May

Earnest young tax inspector Cedric Charlton visits the sizeable Larkin family at Home Farm in the countryside. They have not paid tax in an age and he has come to help them fill in their tax forms. However, they get him drunk and, intoxicated as he already is with the charms of the Larkins eldest daughter Mariette, he decides to stay with them and share their rural idyll.

Pop decides to buy the west wing of the country seat of impoverished aristocrats, the Bluff-Gores, initially for scrap, but Lady Bluff-Gore persuades him to go into the property business. Having rebuffed the advances of urbanite Corinne Perigo, Pop is set up when Mrs. Perigo engineers a situation in which he catches hold of nervous Mrs. Jerebohm to stop her from falling over on a boat. Mrs Perigo encourages the other woman to bring a charge of sexual harassment against Pop.

The whole family go on holiday to France, a holiday which gets off to a bad start. However, when the family car is seen to have a crest on it, it is assumed that they are titled nobility. Mademoiselle Dupont, the pensions owner, calls Pop Milord and gives him and Ma her bedroom. Even the grumpy receptionist is respectful. Primrose, the second eldest daughter, falls for local boy Marc-Antoine but Charley is annoyed to see his wife cavorting with skimpily clad French hunks on the beach.

The Larkin family plan the quintessential English Christmas, with food, drink and presents galore.

Pop comes across a fun-fair owned by his friend Fruity Pears, though it is losing money. Fruity tells off two teddy boys for causing trouble and they attack and hospitalize him, also injuring Pop. Mademoiselle Dupont arrives to be a godmother at the christenings and is initially upset to find that Pop is not a lord, but he apologizes and she ends up having an enjoyable stay. Pop buys the fun-fair and installs it in his yard where everyone celebrates after the church service.

Whilst the Larkins and John Candy shame some of the villagers into accepting Pieter for himself Charley and Mariette track him down and return him to the farm. They discover that he can stay in England if he marries an English girl and he does have a girlfriend, Eileen, but she feels tied to her selfish, supposedly invalid mother. However the Larkins persuade her to act for herself and she arrives at Home Farm to marry Pieter, now a village hero after rescuing one of the bigots bullying son from falling in the quarry.

Pop and Ma go to an open day at their son Montys Naval Training College, where Pop publicly humiliates a bullying instructor who has been making Montys life a misery. Charley gets his gun to see off Copes thugs when they try to destroy the hop-garden, for which he has now got his bank loan to purchase. They return when Cope learns that Pop has got the money from the burglary, which he bank-rolled.

Ma and Pop have a serious think about sending two of the kids, Zinnia and Petunia, to boarding school, but the girls themselves of course are none too keen.

Pop gets a swimming-pool built and gets into pig-breeding, while Primrose has a new love interest.

Pop runs for rural councillor while Charley and Mariette struggle at the brewery and have issues in their relationship.