The series follows the interwoven stories of a number of inhabitants of the Dublin of the 1910s, still under British rule. It is set in the years leading up to WW1 and the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. There are the young wife of a factory worker, a country girl new to the big city, and her husband, a staunch supporter of the unions. Then there is the mighty Union leader Jim Larkin, the elderly priest, who drinks more than is good for him, and his young curate; the delightful tramp Rashers and his dog, and a few members of the better off middle class, some of them sympathetic to those dependent on them, others less so.