A struggling London novelist and his wife inherit a cinema in a long-lost relative's will. Upon arriving in provincial 'Sloughborough', they imagine this means the town's regal Grand cinema. In fact, they've accrued local, debt-ridden, rat-ridden flea pit The Bijou - its marquee letters vibrating to passing trains - and it's three squabbling staff.

Naturally, the plucky out-of-towners opt to renovate, with the help of eccentric scene-stealers Peter Sellers and Margaret Rutherford.