Plot summary

Sir William McCordle (Sir Michael Gambon) is a wealthy, but uncouth industrialist-turned-aristocrat, with a large house in the English countryside, complete with staff. It is a world where everything runs in order, both upstairs, where Sir William and his much younger wife Lady Sylvia (Dame Kristen Scott Thomas) indulge in a very comfortable existence of shooting, dinners, and parties, and downstairs, where the servants work endlessly under the command of the butler Mr. Jennings (Sir Alan Bates), and the housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Dame Helen Mirren). Whether they like it or not, everyone knows his or her place. But a shooting party will change all of that, with friends of the McCordles and their servants arriving from outside to upset the order, and so begins a complicated tale of secrets, lies, deceit, betrayal, revenge, bitterness, hatred, money, and love, and that's all before the murder.—Scott