Adapting David Rudkin's play for television, Alan Clarke created his most lyrical work in Penda's Fen. The landscape around the Malvern Hills is imaginatively integrated into the story of a young boy's last year of adolescence-but stop here: this is no ordinary "coming of age" tale, but a most unusual examination of British manhood, modern politics, and ancient wisdom. Stephen, the son of the local rector, has a passion for Elgar and a consuming curiosity about the Manichaean life-view, which corresponds with his own. Dark and light forces are fighting for his teenage soul, to the consternation of the military academy elders who wish he would fight his battles in the proper English manner: on the rugby field. As Stephen flies through country lanes on his bicycle, his burgeoning sexual, political, and familial ambivalences call forth the spirit of pagan England-and unearth a secret side of his father, the man in the grey flannel frock.