The Fathers introduces us to its titular characters in a Glasgow hospital where both have just given birth to a baby boy. For Dan, a fortysomething TV writer living in the affluent West End of Glasgow, this is his first child with Grace, after a lengthy period of IVF and therefore seen as somewhat miraculous and awe-inspiring. Jada, a small-time criminal, by contrast, is welcoming his fifth (or is it sixth?) child Jayden (or is it Cayden?) with his young girlfriend Nicola. A chance meeting in the hospital corridor seems initially comic and inconsequential, but a tragic sequence of events will draw the two families together in unexpected ways.

Gliff is set in a near-future dystopian version of what seems to be somewhere in England. In it we meet two children, the slightly older Briar/Brice/Bri and their younger sister Rose. Their mother has been taken away for dissent and we initially find them in the care of her boyfriend Leif. They come home to find their house with a red line painted around it, which they take as a cue to flee. When the same happens to their camper van, Leif takes the children to a 'safe house' and sets off alone to look for their mother. From there on in, Bri and Rose are left to fend for themselves.