Adaptation of Anthony Trollope's first two Barchester novels, The Warden and Barchester Towers. The community of Barchester is shaken from its cosy complacency when a newspaper's crusade against the Church of England's practice of self-enrichment backfires. Overnight, Rev. Harding becomes a pawn in a battle between his younger daughter's beau, John Bold, and his older daughter's husband, Archdeacon Grantly. Little do they realise that the worst is yet to come, until a regime change delivers Barchester into the hands of a most unholy trinity: the weak-willed Bishop Proudie, the domineering Mrs. Proudie, and the insufferable Rev. Obadiah Slope.