In the upper crust town of Orbiston Parva which is ostensibly ruled by the wealthy Despard family who owns and operates the town's major employer, the local Tranquilax factory (the product a so-called restorative), the Church of England's Archdeacon Aspinall, who oversees among other churches Holy Trinity, recommends to widowed Lady Lucy Despard, the town's "matriarch", that they hire Reverend John Smallwood, whose family the Archdeacon has known most his life, to fill the currently vacant vicar position for Holy Trinity, Smallwood the type of man who would fit well into the town's upper crust sensibility. Through a clerical error, who the church hires instead is Reverend John Edward Smallwood, a totally different man in almost every respect beyond the job title of reverend, including being somewhat naive in mind. Through what is seen as his unconventional actions both from a church and Orbiston Parva community standpoint, such as hiring Matthew Robinson, a dustman and, gasp, black man, as the church's new warden, and taking into the vicarage the extremely large Smith family, who had been squatting on Tranquilax land now slated for factory expansion, and the adults of which who have decided living off the British welfare system more lucrative than actually working, Smallwood exposes the truly unchristian nature of the townsfolk as a collective, including members of this and other Christian denominational churches. While Smallwood does have a truly positive spiritual effect on some, his actions create an unintentional domino effect which leads to chaos as some cannot break with what they see as their traditions, however unchristian they are.