George, a former Sheffield foundry worker, becomes Gamekeeper on a country estate in South Yorkshire. He delights in his job, enjoying the countryside and protecting the pheasants from all their predators, both foxes and poachers. However, this is no bucolic idyll. His son is bullied, his wife isolated and the poachers that he is chasing are his former colleagues. His stoicism and dry humour see him through. Whatever the contradictions, it has to be better than three shifts in a steel factory.
