Arthur Parker is a sheet music salesman and pedlar of romantic dreams in the England of the 1930s. As he travels throughout the country he has an eye for the ladies, believing that the romance which he hears in the lyrics of the songs he sells really exists.

Reality in the form of his sexually inexperienced wife waits back at home, but Arthur can't handle reality. He chooses instead to embark on an affair with a young schoolteacher from the Valley of Dean, and for a while life is like the fairytale which he so desperately wishes to believe really exists. It is not long before reality impacts upon his world of dreams, but Arthur desperately continues to believe in the romantic ideals of the songs which he sells.

Brilliantly conceived by the writer Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven received great popular and critical acclaim, including the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Drama, when it was first transmitted on BBC TV in 1978. It was voted number 21 in the British Film Institute's Top 100 TV programmes.