Artemis 81

Just over halfway through Artemis 81, the characters Gideon and Helith – played by Hywel Bennett and Sting respectively – leave their romantic idyll, and travel to a forbidding city. This city is not named in the work itself, but following author David Rudkin’s lead, cast and crew referred to it as Geworfen. The viewer is introduced to Geworfen via a dizzying 360-degree view of the entire glowering cityscape. Shortly after arriving in the city, Gideon and Helith board a tram which is full of tubercular passengers coughing blood, while in the background, public address system announcements are made in a harsh and inexplicable language punctuated only by a periodic electronic fanfare. Almost immediately, Helith departs, and Gideon is left alone in this disturbing and alienating territory, and the viewer is similarly disoriented; we’re all in Geworfen now.

As David Rudkin mentions on the DVD commentary for Artemis 81, the name Geworfen is derived from Heidegger’s concept of Geworfenheit, which is commonly translated in English as “thrownness”, or the condition of being thrown into the world. It’s a big concept in existential terms, and necessarily abstract, but one of the special things about Artemis 81 is the way that Rudkin and his director Alistair Reid don’t just explore Geworfenheit but actively manifest it. From the moment Gideon enters the tram, he is randomly thrown into a nightmare world that makes no sense. As viewers, we think perhaps Gideon is in a coma because he was injured in an explosion, and that this is a surreal reverie. Gideon himself says “I dream this. I wake soon” but he never does. As the critic Mark Fisher wrote, “[Gideon’s] experience of thrownness is, of course, doubled by that of the audience. We, too, are perplexed, stripped of much of what we expect to find in television drama”.

Of course, this kind of alienation and perplexity is not for everyone, and much of the contemporary critical reaction to Artemis 81 expressed bewilderment, boredom, and in some cases anger because it was perceived as an expensive waste of money. And yet it struck a chord in some surprising places. Kenneth Hughes of the Daily Mirror previewed the film in glowing terms: “It could be the most baffling show of the holiday, but…is also one of the best of the year.” He also goes on to give the best advice possible for those about to embark on watching Artemis 81: “Don’t worry about understanding it – just relax and enjoy it.” As a 13-year-old I was entranced by the film, didn’t understand any of it bar a few Hitchcock references, and loved it. It remained for a long while one of those things I thought I dreamed rather than watched. Rather brilliantly, journalist Helen Barrett – then aged 11 – was similarly captivated and wrote her own contemporary review, which she kindly sent to our BlueSky feed. So, it appears that thrownness can be appealing after all.

On our Artemis 81 podcast, I mentioned that the producer David Rose was not keen on the BBC’s use of the audience Reaction Index, which took opinions from a sample of the viewing public who then marked each programme, resulting in a score out of a hundred. Rose was wary of celebrating a high score, and thought a low number probably indicated something more worthwhile. This wasn’t born out of snobbery - Rose was the first producer of Z Cars which was a popular hit that caused a good deal of controversy as well - but out of a conviction that high-quality work is often challenging: “I mean I produced a thing that got something like 89. At the weekly meeting they’d say “How wonderful this is,” and I’d say, “Well, yes. It means everybody loved it but…isn’t there more to it than that?” Artemis 81 got a Reaction Index of 43, which was an improvement on Rudkin’s earlier masterpiece Penda’s Fen which only managed a modest 39. The fact that the latter went on to be one of the most influential single plays ever made, bears out Rose’s view that truly original work can hit initial resistance from the audience: “If it’s doing it’s job, some people may be found to be offended.”

These comments from Rose are included in Ian Greaves’ new book Penda’s Fen: Scene by Scene, which has just been published by Ten Acre Films. Ian is an old friend so I’m less than impartial, but the book is an amazing achievement. There have already been two books written about Penda’s Fen, and yet Ian has gone far deeper into the play than I would have believed possible. As the book’s title suggests, each of the 29 scenes that make up the play are analyzed in extreme detail, using primary sources such as draft scripts, production paperwork, and interviews with cast and crew. Interspersed with the scene chapters are a series of “intermissions” which are essays about subjects related to Penda’s Fen. For example, there are pieces on Alan Clarke the director, Rudkin’s other work for both television and radio, actor Spencer Banks, and even an explanation of how the on-screen death of a sparrow was achieved.  This structure works well, with the intermissions acting as a break from the analysis and offering up a detailed picture of the broadcasting context in which the play was produced.

The real triumph of the book is that Ian has accessed the eight versions of the Penda’s Fen script which are held in the British Library, which he helpfully summarizes at the start of the book. I was delighted to find out that the first draft, known as the Cartridge Draft, was a single piece of artists’ cartridge paper the size of a dining table. Sadly, it hasn’t survived, but it was the initially unconnected stories on this vast piece of paper that eventually coalesced into Penda’s Fen. Ian’s archaeological work on the evolution of the final play is painstaking and illuminating, but it never takes the mystery out of the play. If anything, it deepens it.

Is this book the last word on Penda’s Fen? Unlikely. In the end, the play itself will always have the last word. But as well as the book being a richly rewarding insight into a remarkable play, it’s also a must read for anyone who wants to understand broadcasting in the 1970s. There’s no better guide than Ian, who is formidably knowledgeable about the period, and much of that knowledge comes from his conversations over the years with many of the key protagonists, as well as from production files and draft scripts. The best intermission of the book is Ian’s essay about his friend David Rose. It’s a warm tribute to one of the television greats and is worth the price of the book alone. Highly recommended.

Next Time: Lynda La Plante and Killer Net

Sources in chronological order: 

Kenneth Hughes, Don’t Worry..Just Enjoy It, Daily Mirror, 29 Dec 1981, p19

Helen Barrett, Unpublished review, 29 Dec 1981

Mark Fisher, Visionary Television, Film Quarterly, 64, 2 (Winter 2010), pp.58-63

Ian Greaves, Penda’s Fen: Scene by Scene, Ten Acre Films, 2025