In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, during the Great Depression, the Walton family makes its small income from its sawmill on Walton's Mountain.

A long-running drama based upon the "Little House" series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, "Little House on the Prairie" follows the lives of the simple, farming Ingalls family: Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, Carrie and then Grace and the later adopted Albert, James and Cassandra, who settle into a quaint little house on the banks of Plum Creek near the small town of Walnut Grove during the late 1800s.

The trials and tribulations, joyous occasions and heartbreaking moments of the Lawrence family: lawyer father Doug, housewife Kate, married (and quickly divorced) daughter Nancy, teenage son Willie and just-hitting-puberty daughter Buddy.

This is a story about sports-broadcaster-turned-morning-talk-show-host Danny Tanner and his three little girls, D. J. (Donna Jo), Stephanie, and Michelle Tanner.

The film opens with pub landlord and frequent holidaymaker Vic Flange (Sid James) openly flirting with the sassy saucepot widow Sadie Tompkins (Barbara Windsor) as his battleaxe wife, Cora (Joan Sims), looks on with disdain.