The story is about Caroline who marries an unemployed actor named Kevin. She supports him as he flirts with other women and spoils her flat with his oafish behaviour. Caroline finally throws him out when he seduces one of her pupils. Now feeling miserable and isolated she goes to dinner with Jilly and Ivor. Here she meets Matthew who appears eminently suitable. Their affair is doomed by Matthew's persistent, precision fault-finding and Caroline now realizes she can better cope with the slovenly though kind-hearted Kevin sprawling on her sofa.

"Suburban Strains" was premiered in 1980 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round Scarborough. It is the first full lenght collaboration by Ayckbourn and Todd. Suburban Strains; a plot evolved in clever time-spitting sequences between the present and three years past.