Zack Elliot is a successful young doctor in the Los Angeles area married to Claire, an equally successful television network executive during the early 1980s. They have been married for eight years and are generally happy in their relationship, sharing in common a love for Gilbert and Sullivan and the poetry of Rupert Brooke, to whom they were introduced by their elderly former neighbor, Winnie Bates. Intending to start a family, the couple buys a big house.