Potter envisions an ordinary day in bucolic England during theSecond World War, as seven children begin an afternoon's wanderingthrough the woods. Adult actors (among them Helen Mirren, MichaelElphick and Colin Welland), clothed in ill-fitting, almost comicoutfits, portray the children whose activities often reflect the tormentand cruelties of the distant war. Their savage games result in pettyrivalries, betrayals, and eventually, tragic consequences. Potter wroteof his decision to cast the film with adults: "Our culture has longsince acknowledged that childhood is not transparent with innocence, andthat its apparent simplicities are but the opacities of the veryanxieties and aggressions which we occasionally seek to evade by meansof misplaced nostalgia for those 'blue remembered hills' of Housman'saching little verse." Struck with a blue note, this televisiondrama grasps with precision the tribal passions of childhood.