All Desires Known... And from whom no secrets are hid. (from the collect before Communion in the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.)

Lay out your classic English village in a little bowl-shaped valley: you'll need a church, village hall, couple of farms, row of council houses, old rectory, and a river.

Take the following ingredients:

One disaffected vicar

One vicar's wife, rural-life-fantasist

A jobbing gardener and log man

The gardener's mother (who happens to be the vicar's ex)

The gardener's sisters: one young and...