A fictional look at what might happen if the Thames were to flood before completion of the Thames Barrier at the end of 1982. A series of freak weather conditions coincide and there is a real possibility that the Thames will flood as a surge tide is racing down the East Coast.

Secure in her suburban home, Virginia Fly dreams of a life of unbridled passion and romance. She feels her fantasies are about to become reality when she is asked to take part in a TV documentary about pre-marital love - a subject about which she is sadly ignorant...

American (Churchill) in London dislikes England until his daughter (Lehmann) falls for the son (Granger) of the Lord (Drayton) with whom he wants to conclude a business deal.

Hiram Draper is an all-American self-made man with a profound distaste for everything British. Yet he must travel to London with his family. When Junior falls in love with an aristocratic girl, whose father despises Americans with equal intensity, fireworks are just about to start.

A mentally-ill psychiatrist, refusing to take her medications while on leave for the death of her daughter, returns to work with her police detective ex-husband on a serial-torturer case.

Centers on Cece, a single mother battling poverty and eviction while raising a sick son. Her brother Dante, fresh from prison, returns, mirroring Cece's struggles.

After a failed suicide attempt, Dawn (Jodie Jameson) is sent by her psychiatrist on a trip to recuperate. She visits an old family flat in a remote apartment by the sea. Heavily sedated with medication and alcohol, she tries to decode her life through the pages of a journal. Walking on a deserted Norfolk beach she finds a dying mutant mermaid foetus. Initially repulsed, she becomes obsessed with it, takes it home and tries to resuscitate it. Dawn’s Swedish friend Milla visits at the weekend. While out drinking with Dawn, she catches a man at an unguarded moment and they end up in bed. In the cellar, the creature can sense the vibrations from the bedroom. Feeding off the sexual energy coursing through the flat, the creature strengthens and grows. After Milla leaves, Dawn checks on the creature in the cellar; it’s covered in a thin slime. Drawn to the smell, she tastes it and finds that it has hallucinogenic effects. Dawn’s life is about to get even stranger.

In a vague and futuristic world, people must pay for every single service in their life. When a stripper and a thief meet, they find a meaning within it.

San is a middle-aged man who is the head of his own family. He has to look after his sick wife and still-growing children in the middle of an economic downturn. His Shabu business is not doing so well, practically, no customers at all. The sickness of his wife is getting worse and worse every day and the hospital cost is getting out of hands. He tries every way to get his family through the situation at the expense of his own life.

Peter Greenaway presents this "Commentary in one hundred parts" on Drowning by Numbers (1987), discussing and analyzing many of the film's more intriguing features.