OMG - how exciting new Archers spin off show Archers Extra

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www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8385115/Archers-spin-off-to-follow-characters-outside-Ambridge.html

Just heard this announced on R4 - starts next month, how exciting.

Surely I can't be the only person excited bythis?

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo
Please tell me it's an early April Fool.

I'm quite irrationally excited by this.

Can Jolene and Kenton still have a baby?

Can we start a petition

I am of two minds.

Possibly 3, if you count the one wondering how to tune into R4 Extra.

Maybe we could write some of the story lines?

Isn't it all about Alice Aldridge?

I'm in two minds, too. Seems like a cheap ploy to push listeners onto digital, when DAB is still far from ideal and few people are clued up enough about radio being available on Freeview, Sky and FreeSat, because for years the shops have ignored radio services on these "digital TV boxes" (and unless you have your sound wired separately, it's a waste of energy to have a TV on just to hear the radio services).

piprabbit - there will no doubt be links from the R4 pages at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 to the 'R4 Extra' pages, and you'll be able to hear the programmes via the web, if you have no other options such as DAB or digital TV box.

Thanks NetworkGuy, I'll try fiddling with the DAB radio - who knows what I'll find.

Isn't Radio 4 Extra effectively just the current Radio 7 with a new name and access to even more of the R4 back catalogue?

That would be good, Snorbs - I listen to R7 when R4 is too annoying.

Yes, Snorbs, so it will not be found yet ("coming soon" [from April], as the incessant radio ads on R4 keep saying about it), so you won't find "Radio4 Extra" (or whatever it will be displayed as), just yet piprabbit.

True but if you can find some means to get Radio 7 now, you'll get Radio 4 Extra when it changes over.

Saying that I just tend to pick and choose Radio 7 programmes from iPlayer. I don't think I've ever listened to it live.

So this will be bits of Archers life that aren't quite exciting enough to make it into Standard Archers?

That will be Alice adjusting her pony's noseband, then, and Clarrie turning down the thermostat on the yoghurt machine?

On second thoughts, those events are probably exciting enough to make it into the main programme.

Or is it going to be Yoof Archers so that R4Extra can get down wiv da kidz?

"Archers Nights - Uncut"

SerialComma - given a good proportion of the current R7 output dates from the 50s to the 90s I don't see there are many "kidz" that would switch it on... really is nothing like 1Xtra at all :)

Lily is a judgement upon her mother.

Now Lizzie knows what the rest of her family has had to go through.

Hmm, probably won't listen to it unless they provide a podcast version as they do the main one.

Oh I know Network I am an avid listener, but NEVER underestimate the capacity of R4 (and stablemates) to fuck with something good in order to make a panicky reachout beyond their normal demographic. Think of the achingly awful kids stuff they have done in the past (so bad that my memory has traumatically wiped its names).

They are so frightened that young people and non-Guardian-reading-laptop-wielding-harpies () won't like them that they aim again and again to be what they are not.

Look what they did to Gardeners' Question Time. The learned Stefan Buczacki resigned from that once-excellent programme when it turned into a dumbed-down gurning apology for itself. They are so scared of seeming unwelcoming to some imaginary audience based on a Dick & Dom mentality.

Not sharing the excitement here; after forty years of virtually daily listening, I stopped listening altogether after the fiasco that was the new year's 'drama'. Oddly enough, I don't miss it at all.

OMG I am so excited!

Radio interview I heard today says they might be using characters who are only mentioned and have no speaking parts. Those shadowy wraith-like characters who have always just left the room before you walk in.

Imagine that...Freida talking

Hmmm - it might be quite fun to hear Sabrina's side of the story...

I agree that Gqt isn't waney it once was, but I love the Archers so much that even thought I know the extra version won't be the same I still can't wait.