A wonderfully moving and undeservedly obscure four-part BBC drama, NATURE BOY is the coming of age story of sixteen year old David Witton (Lee Ingleby, MR. TURNER). Living in foster care for as long as he remembers, David in uninterested school (where he is in the remedial course) and picked on by foster parent Len (Ewan Stewart, VALHALLA RISING) whose wife (Ruth McCabe, WAKE WOOD) is too harried with her other charges to stand up for him. The only solace David is able to find is in nature, spending most of his days and nights on the nearby island nature reserve with loner Fred (Mark Benton, BREAKING AND ENTERING). His drug-addicted mother refuses to see him, but a remark from a neighbor woman sparks a series of long-suppressed memories that reveal that his long absent father (Paul McGann, WITHNAIL AND I) was responsible for fostering his love of nature when he was much younger. When his good-natured teacher (Elizabeth Berrington, IN BRUGES) brings his knowledge of animals to light, he becomes as unpopular as the Chinese kid with the bullies in the class for standing out (earning the nickname "Nature Boy"). His only friend is new girl Anne-Marie (CORONATION STREET's Vicky Binns) but she quickly falls in with a bad crowd and drugs, revealing secrets he told her in confidence. When the bullies attack the nature reserve, burning Fred's cottage after it is revealed that he is a suspected pedophile, and Anne-Marie goes swimming on her own and drowns in the high tides, David can no longer stay in a place where bullies (young and old) destroy all things different (Len has also brutally killed one of his exotic pet birds that favored David) and takes to the road in search of his father. In the second episode, he finds himself caught in between Jenny (Joanne Froggatt, FILTH), the idealistic girl he is falling in love with, and Martha (Lesley Sharp, NAKED), the PR consultant to a local company whose cement dust is responsible for several local illnesses and deaths (and who has let David take shelter in her garden shed while he is looking after a rescued fox cub). His quest to find his father then takes a detour when he follows Jenny (who has managed to find a possible address for his father's whereabouts) to the Midlands where they join a group trying to prevent forest land from being cut down for an airport runway. After a raid on the site has tragic consequences, David must decide whether to stay or to finally confront his father and find out why he abandoned his family.