Middle aged Chris Harper (Dame Helen Mirren) and Annie Clarke (Dame Julie Walters) are best friends. They spend much of their time at their local Knapely, Yorkshire County chapter of the Women's Institute (WI), whose motto is "enlightenment, fun, and friendship". Although they like most of the women at the WI (the friendship part), they, but the perceived flaky Chris in particular, hold the way Marie (Geraldine James), the local President, runs the chapter with derision. They find much of what goes on there, especially the monthly presentations, banal and devoid of enlightenment and fun. Equally as banal was last year's fund-raising calendar, featuring local bridges, which raised a meager £75.60, with this year's proposed calendar, local churches, promising to be even more so. After Annie's husband John (John Alderton) dies from leukemia, Chris wants the WI to provide a memorial in his memory: a new sofa for the family room at the hospital. The one Chris wants to buy costs nine hundred ninety-nine pounds sterling, which she proposes to raise by changing the fund-raising calendar to one featuring tasteful photographs of nude Knapely WI members. She got the idea by seeing all around her the notion of the old adage that sex sells. Annie likes the idea as it is analogous to one of horticultural-loving John's last statements about plants being the most glorious in the latter stages of their life, after which they quickly go to seed. To get the project off the ground, they not only have to convince nine other WI members to pose (December to be a group photograph), but they have to find a photographer they trust that will treat this task as an art project. Conversely, they aren't sure if they and the calendar will meet with the same contempt from Marie, the national WI organization and their friends and family that they are so trying to change in the Knapely WI, and in the process not only not raise the necessary money, but, in fact lose money instead. or the project in any form may have its own consequences, especially for Chris.

Charlie Price grew up with his father in the family shoe business, but he never thought he'd take his father's place. But his father's untimely death places him exactly there, where he learns that Price and Sons Shoes is failing. While in despair at his failed attempts to save the business, Charlie has a chance encounter with flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer Lola. Her complaints about the inadequate footwear for her work, combined with the suggestion of one of Charlie's ex-employees, Lauren, lead to a bid to save the business by making men's fetish footwear. Charlie convinces Lola to be their footwear designer and the transition begins. Now this disparate lot must struggle with this unorthodox idea while dealing with the prejudice of the staff, Lola's discomfort in the small town, and the selfish manipulation of Charles' greedy fiancee, who cannot see the greater good in Charlie's dream.