Zack Elliot is a successful young oncologist in the Los Angeles area married to Claire, an equally successful television network executive during the early 1980s. They first met when they were both in college and have been married for eight years and are generally happy in their relationship, sharing a love for Gilbert and Sullivan and the poetry of Rupert Brooke, to whom they were introduced by their elderly former neighbor, Winnie Bates. Intending to start a family, the couple buy a big house.