Alex Burchill writes the Lowdown column for struggling tabloid newspaper, the Sunday Sun. Circulation is in decline and the paper is downsizing and adapting to the brutal economic climate, and Alex's methods for unearthing stories become increasingly desperate. Each week he must come up with a shock-and-awe story for the embattled paper, and each week that shock-and-awe story somehow ruins his own life.

Alex Burchill is the top reporter at the once mighty tabloid shock-sheet, the Sunday Sun. But with circulation in decline, Alex has to stop the rot by producing a scandalous, circulation-boosting story on a misbehaving celebrity every week. And every week, the universe punishes him for his intrusions into the private lives of the rich and famous by somehow ruining his life.