Episode list

Sixteen year old David lives in foster care following his father's departure from home when he was small and his mother's breakdown, and attends a rowdy remedial class. He is happiest communing with nature,swimming nude and bird-watching with loner friend Fred. Though he impresses his school teacher with his knowledge of nature a school trip to a nature reserve ends in disaster when he has to kill an injured deer. Following the death of a precocious girl in care with him and the burning down of Fred's hut by a mob who learn that he is an ex-paedophile David sets free his bullying foster-father's captive birds and sets off in search of his real father.

David lives off the land,adopting an injured fox as a pet and sleeping in a shed. He meets Miles,the withdrawn son of unhappily married Tom and Martha and encourages Miles to speak. A grateful Martha goes to bed with David but they are discovered by Tom and David moves on,having met Jenny,a librarian,part of a protest group against Blexco,the factory where Martha works and who gives him an address to help find his father.

David re encounters Jenny,now a fervent member of a protest camp occupying woods to prevent them being cleared to accommodate an airport runway. He asks her to accompany him on his search for his father but she is determined to stay and fight. Initially uninvolved - and bonding with Ted,the under-sheriff trying to clear the camp peacefully, through a love of fishing - David is caught up in a brawl with invading security guards and,after realising Ted lied to him about the eviction date,joins the protesters in an underground tunnel. When rain causes its collapse he and the others are in danger and have to be rescued.

Using the address given him by Jenny David travels south and gets work as an apple picker. He meets Esther,a woman with whom his father Steve once lived and her daughter and,through them,locates Steve,who is now a wealthy but terminally ill recluse,initially cool towards David. However after David has accused him of abandoning his family he lets him stay but his time on Earth is coming to an end. David then returns to the North,where Jennuy is in hospital in a coma though she seems to respond to his voice and touch.