Episode 1, 'Friends and enemies', tx. 19/6/1989
1942. A London boys' prep school, St. Georges', is evacuated from Sussex to a converted clifftop hotel in Devon. New boy Joe Hirsch, a Jewish carpenter's son who has fled Nazi Germany with his mother, is placed under the reluctant wing of Michael Jordan - also a Jew but the son of a successful barrister. Michael thinks of himself as English, not Jewish, and Joe's thick accent embarrasses him. Joe's mother works at the school in a menial position, in the kitchens.
The boys have organised themselves into rival gangs - the Bulldogs (after Bulldog Drummond) and the Saints (after Simon Templar). While Michael and Joe form an uneasy relationship, the adults around them have differing expectations of life 'after the war'. One of the schoolmasters, the disciplinarian and disabled Mr Quarles, is distrustful of the 'clever-clevers' in his class, of whom Michael is clearly one, and exhibits quasi-Fascist tendencies, hankering after a colonial world which is clearly past.
The boys are lost in their own world, their games mimicking the wider events happening around them. Fairfax, leader of the Saints, bullies Carmody, taking away his toy train. Michael does his best to instil in Joe an awareness and acceptance of school 'virtues'.
Joe's mother is very kind to Michael, inviting him to tea, but Michael is embarrassed and angers Joe by referring to her as a 'skivvy'. She has several admirers among the American soldiers stationed nearby. Carmody learns that his father has been killed; Fairfax returns his toy train.
Michael joins the Bulldogs, Joe the Saints. One morning a mine is seen floating just off the shore, and the boys are evacuated again, spending the night at nearby Drake Hall while the bomb disposal squad deal with it. Jenks, the Bulldogs' leader, steals a valuable ornament from the Hall, planning to frame the Saints; he lets it be known where the ornament has been hidden and Fairfax takes it.
When the theft is discovered, the Saints have to dispose of it - Joe suggests hiding it at his mother's quarters. Quarles suggests a search of the premises and the object is found. Mother and son are ordered to leave - the result of Joe trying to 'fit in' and be accepted by the other boys, as Michael has advised. Michael lies, saying he took the ornament. The other boys now shun him, while Joe, secure at the school, calls him a traitor.
