THE PARADISE – Series – R – Series 1 begins in 1875, and portrays the lives and loves of the people who work, shop and trade, in and around the first English department store. The owner of The Paradise department store is widower John Moray. Moray was once a draper's boy in Emerson’s, the small shop that grew under his management into The Paradise, which has come to dominate the high street to the detriment of small shopkeepers nearby. Enter Denise Lovett, from the small town of Peebles in Scotland, whose uncle Edmund is one of the shopkeepers struggling to survive. Soon seen by Moray as a rising star, she must work with Miss Audrey, the head of ladies' fashion, and Clara, a fellow shop girl.