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In 1959, Jeffrey Fairbrother, a professor at Cambridge University's archaeology department, has grown tired of academic life and decided to apply as the new entertainment manager for Maplin's Essex holiday camp. Whilst his family are deeply concerned, Fairbrother begins to question his move as he has a run-in with the camp's host, Ted Bovis, who is eager to keep swindling campers despite being placed in charge of the camp's new comic, Spike Dixon. But a chance meeting with some train passengers swiftly reveals that the new manager might make it after all.

As the entertainment staff of Maplin's prepare for their involvement in the annual Crimpton-on-Sea carnival parade, Fairbrother is shocked when the dean of his college turns up. He soon finds himself torn between his life at the holiday camp and an opportunity for a new posting in Cambridge, until an incident leads him to decide on what he wants most.

Maplin requests that Gladys be made in charge of the other Yellowcoats, whom he is disappointed with. The others soon resent this when she modifies her uniform to show off her new rank. But Gladys soon regrets this, especially when she jumps to conclusions regarding her half-brother; when he arrives at the camp around the same time, there is a Peeping Tom disturbing the female staff and campers.

Fairbrother learns his estranged wife, who wants a divorce, has been having an affair with a judge, the Honourable Max Tewkesbury. When he arrives, he asks him to accept her request, but Fairbrother is not eager to do so. While Gladys is disturbed, due to her love for him, neither realise Max's arrival is not what it seems to be.

Ted is put off by a new mechanical volcano exhibit placed in the camp's ballroom, when it ruins his routine for the campers. When Fairbrother refuses to remove it, Ted calls on Fred to tamper with it, roping in Spike and Peggy to assist in the scheme. At the same time, Partridge is facing trouble for his recent drunken hijinx, and so decides to rat out the group for their actions, only to get Fairbrother and Gladys into a bit of a problem.

The local vicar announces to Fairbrother that he will no longer lead any further Sunday services at the camp, owing to Maplin's increasingly bizarre suggestions that he cannot abide with. To fix the problem, the Yellowcoats are tasked with trying to fill in the gap, but Ted's proposal creates a rather bizarre Sunday service without the vicar.

Maplin is installing a statue of himself at each of his holiday camps, and request the staff at the Crimpton-on-Sea camp to oversee a dignified occasion for its unveiling. But Spike causes problems when, while drunk, he accidentally repaints the statue into a clown. Ted is forced to quickly rectify the problem, before the unveiling ceremony.

A Chad graffiti craze breaks out at the camp, and Maplin orders the staff to put a stop to it. In the process of trying to help with cleaning it up, Barry suffers a back injury, leading Yvonne to call on a former boyfriend, Julian Dalrymple-Sykes, to help her out in his absence. Meanwhile, the graffiti vandalism proves problematic to such a point, that Ted decides to step in with an ingenious plan to put a stop to it.

Ted looks forward to a visit to Maplins' home office in London in hopes he will become entertainment manager of the camp, as some new Yellowcoat girls turn up to help with the new season. But his dreams are dashed when it transpires Maplin has hired a former RAF pilot, Clive Dempster, to become the new manager. Ted soon takes a sudden distrust to his arrival.

Peggy accidentally comes across a letter that Clive left in a jacket pocket, which she and Spike read. A mistaken belief in the letter leads then to wrongly assume he is there to spy on the staff and report any of them who are conducting rackets, prompting Spike to shut them down to avoid everyone being fired.

The entertainment staff decide to arrange a surprise party for Gladys, whose birthday is fast approaching. Only Peggy discovers that she has been offered dinner by Clive and Maplin's top man, Harold Fox, and she can't disappoint both. To assist her, Peggy suggests a scheme to avoid sad faces, but Gladys is in for a shock when she learns that everyone seems to have the same plan for her.

With Partridge gone, the entertainment staff face problems when the parents expect a Punch-and-Judy show for their children. Maplin soon provides a suggestion to the group, but it involves performances of nursery rhymes for the children, which most of the staff hate. Not happy with this, Ted and Spike chance upon a promising entertainer at the beach, Sammy Morris, and offer him a job at the camp once they clean him up, but things do not go to plan as they hope.

In the aftermath of the competition, Spike and Gladys are horrified when he takes advantage of their win to get some publicity for his business, by claiming both are to be engaged. As both try to figure out what to do, Peggy is shocked when she learns the truth behind Gladys visit to Clive's father, prompting Ted to convince him to do the right thing.

The 1960 holiday season is coming to a close, but hiccup in proceedings leads to Gladys being down on female Yellowcoat. For Peggy, the chance she has been waiting for arrives, and she finally gets her dream come true. But as everyone considers what they will be doing next year, Foster returns with some news that impacts all of them.