Many years ago, in the Lancashire town of Roker Bridge, two boys called Hodge and Eric began a lifelong friendship.

Right from the first year infants - when Hodge threw Eric's Thunderbird Two into the nettles out of jealousy and then got seriously stung trying to get it back - this good-looking lad and his loser of a mate have pulled each other through life's ups and downs.

Sixteen years later, with Eric unemployed and Hodge selling grass seed and decoy ducks in a garden centre, Eric talked Hodge into joining the Territorial Army.

Thus the odd couple discovered a whole new set of mates - Spock, the history teacher who used to dodge rugby at school and avoid the showers; Lloydy, the man-mountain with the unhappy knack of messing up just about everything; Ally, the solicitor's wife desperately searching for her real self; Dawn, the gorgeous college student who hates students and Diesel, the human dynamo with big ambitions. Then there’s vindictive but wounded Sergeant Polson…

The people they meet in the volunteer force are people whose paths they would never have crossed in the civilian world, but with whose fates  they become entwined; because the truth is, training for war is nothing compared to the battles they are all fighting in their own lives.

The show ran for three series on BBC 1 from 1994-1997.