Alec Graham (Alec McCowen) is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie Cole (Christina Lubicz), with whom he was spending the night at the flat of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford (Paul Daneman). Alec's father, David Graham (Sir Michael Redgrave), a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in the day before the planned execution from Canada to visit his son on death row. Alec is resigned to his fate and not amenable to his father's attempts for a final reconciliation. David Graham, convinced of his son's innocence and, despite his preoccupation with himself and his own alcoholism, mounts a last-ditch effort to find the true murderer in the twenty-four hours remaining until the planned execution. Graham encounters the wealthy and famous car manufacturer Robert Stanford (Leo McKern), tyrant at home and in the office, and an apparent womanizer, Stanford's young, curiously troubled wife Honor (Ann Todd), their ill-at- ease adopted son Brian, himself disturbed by his parents' relationship, and Vickie Harker (Lois Maxwell), a young, brazen secretary at Stanford's factory who received a promotion following Alec's conviction.