Three couples in their three kitchens on the Christmas Eves of three successive years. First: the lower-class but very much up-and-coming Hopcrofts in their bright new kitchen anxiously giving a little party to their bank manager and his wife, and and architect neighbor. Then, the architect and his wife in their neglected untidy flat. Lastly, the bank manager and his wife in their large, slightly modernized kitchen. Running like a darker thread through the wild comedy of behind-the-scenes disasters at Christmas parties is the story of the advance of the Hopcrofts to material prosperity and independence-and the decline of the others. In the final stages the little man is well and truly on top.