Sean wallows in his unreciprocated love for Susan, which endures the length of the first series, as do his futile efforts to shake off Angela, a former one-night stand who claims to be madly in love with him. Things look promising when a new script arrives from dead author Samuel Beckett. But when Windsor Davies shows up at his door carrying a giant box of concentrated strawberry jelly and asking to use his bathroom, Sean is worried the show will take a turn for the worse and resort to cheap gimmicks for laughs.
Sean fears he may have had a one-night stand with the wife of Barry the bar keeper, but he can't seem to recall the particulars. He thinks the situation might work out in his favor, however, when he learns that the news of his indiscretion has made Susan jealous. Sean performs his rendition of Patsy Cline's ""Crazy.""
Sean asks his neighbor Tony to build him a shed so he'll have a place to smoke cigarettes unrebuked. Meanwhile, he decides to commit suicide by employing the ""Morrissey method"" of dancing himself to death wistfully, but his will to live is revived when his suicide note is published and becomes a best-seller. Panic sets in when it's time for the credits to roll and a moral for the episode hasn't been established.
Tony usurps Sean's identity while he's away on holiday in Greece. When Sean returns, he learns that his pen pal is trying to kill him and that Angela has devised a dastardly plan to blackmail him into marrying her. Tony's scheme to take over Sean's life and win Susan backfires when he is caught in a fight between high ranking officials of the Sicilian Mafia and Greek thugs, all of whom have it in for Sean.
Sean gets in touch with his paternal nature when he discovers he has a 12-year-old son named Gordon who is going to come and live with him. Gordon's arrival forces Sean to confront his issues about his relationship with his own father.
Announcing that his angsting days are over, Sean seizes control of the script and reworks his character to be ""tougher."" To demonstrate his resolve, he writes letters to Susan and Angela, declaring once and for all his feelings of love for the one and utter contempt for the other.
Sean's house is stripped bare by the burglars who have been furnishing it throughout the series, and all his belongings are returned to rightful owner Elton Welsby. Barry becomes paranoid that he will be killed off before the end of the episode because the rest of the supporting cast has been done in already. Sean performs Julian Cope's ""Jelly Pop Perky Jean"" for Susan in one final attempt to win her love.
As the second series kicks off, we learn Sean has moved to a new house in Chelsea, which he shares with a vicious pet dog, a couple of apathetic Bosnian refugee lodgers, and a spider claiming to be Elvis Presley. When Sean watches a scary movie, he becomes paranoid that a psycho killer is out to get him. The dead cast is soon resurrected, offering implausible explanations for their return, and Sean receives a package with tips for improving his ratings based on the popularity of The Golden Girls.
In order to pay his enormous phone bill, Sean gets a job in ""petroleum distribution"" at the local garage. God rings to inform him that a man of the cloth is being sent round to knock some sense into him. Barry and Tony throw Sean a house-warming party.
While working at the garage, Sean meets Lizzie, a beautiful woman who shares his affinity for spontaneous choreographed song and dance numbers. He decides to propose marriage, but the moment is ruined when her father mysteriously explodes in Sean's back room.
The entire cast is under suspicion for the suspected murder of Bobby Workman, the man who did odd jobs around Sean's house. Sean is imprisoned for being Irish, but he doesn't mind, as it'll give him a chance to catch up on his reading. Led by Mrs Pebbles, the others must devise a plan to break him out of jail.
Sean has begun dating Trudy, a prison worker he met in last week's episode. Problems arise when Trudy announces she wants to have a baby, and it appears Sean doesn't get much say in the matter. Sean receives a further shock when he finds out his best friend Tony is already married with children.
Sean's attempt to throw a dinner party has ended in disaster, leaving Sean, Barry, and Tony in hospital and the women in their lives estranged. As they lie wounded and confused and struggle to piece together where exactly the evening wrong, the guys differ drastically in their recollection of events, but they agree on one point: they're ashamed to be men.
Tony spoils the story for the final episode, so a new plot must be devised at the last minute. When Sean's parents ring to tell him that he's adopted, he begins the search for his natural mother, encountering one candidate who looks suspiciously like Robert Smith of The Cure. Sean and Elvis the Spider perform a duet of I Got You Babe, and (of course) Sean receives a visit from a space alien.
