Three-part series focusing on the rampant social snobbery of a small English town in the interwar years. Emmeline Lucas (Anna Chancellor), known to her friends as Lucia, comes into conflict with social rival Miss Elizabeth Mapp (Miranda Richardson) when she moves to the small town of Tilling. Miss Mapp has long been flourishing as the unopposed head of Tilling's social activity and is seen as a woman of great importance to her upper-middle class community. But she meets her match in the recently widowed Lucia who sees her new home as the perfect platform to ingratiate herself with society again, pitting the two women against each other on a collision course towards social perfection.