The Dorrits are a family whose life revolves around the Marshalsea, a debtor's prison. Amy Dorrit's kind nature brings the family into contact with a wide swath of English society, from the poorest to the richest, and back again.

This mini-series tells the story of Amy Dorrit, who spends her days earning money for the family and looking after her proud father, who is a long term inmate of Marshalsea debtors prison in London. Amy and her family's world is transformed when her boss's son, Arthur Clennam, returns from overseas to solve his family's mysterious legacy and discovers that their lives are interlinked.