David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen (1974), directed by Alan Clarke for the BBC’s Play for Today series, is a landmark of British television that functions as a coming-of-age story, a theological inquiry, and a radical exploration of English identity. The film follows Stephen, a priggish, 18-year-old son of a village rector in the Malvern Hills whose rigid, conformist world fractures as he confronts his repressed homosexuality and the realization that he is adopted. It offers a powerful, "visionary" critique of the binary "Manichaean" worldview, inviting viewers to embrace the "manifold" nature of humanity. Explore the film's complex themes on the BBC.
