Welcome to Spent--an isolated and rather odd town somewhere in the North. Its singular inhabitants lead blackly comic lives, from Dr. Chinnery, the lethally incompetent vet and Pauline, the monstrous Restart Officer at the Job Centre, to the hideously exacting Dentons who impose their disturbing habits and pet toads upon their visiting nephew Ben. These and other memorable townsfolk are ferried around by Barbara, a taxi driver half way through his sex change, and served by Mr. Iingleby, who brings a whole new meaning to the term "small shopkeeper."