Rogered by a hobbit in the LL undergrowth, buried in a raised bed with Bert or harassed behind the arras with Adam? Pick your Ambridge fate here.

[PseudoBadger]

A big showdown tonight I hope.

Thanks to Zero (I think?) for the great title.

She began in Corrie I think and now in other stuff I don't watch. I hope they don't 'darken' Lewis too much though (I get fed up of producers who reckon no one wants to watch unless there's buckets of blood and sex).

tallgiraffe and teeny

ugh to Jill saying she might not want to live in Ambridge any more.
WHATEVVVEEEERRRRRR sw. how ridiculous

Is she going to be the love interest for the posh uptight one?

Yes Jill saying she would even consider it was such rubbish! As if she would abandon all her friends and family like that. So a road cuts through and her son skulks off - doesn't change the fact she is part of a community.

It's the hypocrisy of Ruth - my dm can't possibly be expected to leave where she's from but i will happily uproot your mum and the kids

ugh to Jill saying she might not want to live in Ambridge any more.

I suppose that it is called The Archers, it is not called Ambridge, so they could, by some weird BBC logic, justify relocation.
But the idea that the cornerstones - David, Ruth and Jill - could move has somehow knocked the stuffing out of the programme for me. I'm sat here thinking "what's the point in following this any more?"

Is Sean O'Connor going to depopulate the whole village?

I wonder if we're being taken to the brink with this proposed sale of Brookfield to highlight the effect of major transport initiatives on small communities, as well as the dilemma of an aged parent living a long way away.
It's a rare family these days that doesn't have to face up to that one. Jill is fortunate in having a choice of children in large houses keen to have her live with them but Heather is more typical.
I think this will either fizzle out to nothing when the sinkhole is revealed to make Route B unsuitable and the butterflies come good or it will develop into a massive family row over the B'field shares.
Either way, I don't think it will happen unless the SWs have completely taken leave of their senses (or the actors are fed up and want to leave).

Interesting that Jill's also told Carol something in confidence. Maybe Carol will assume that Lizzie knows about the Prudhoe move and will mention it in sympathetic tones to Lizzie who will hit the roof and demand her share.

Perhaps we should develop the next thread title around WHERE IS IAN? and ramp up some pressure if he doesn't reappear this week!

or the actors are fed up and want to leave

If you read Tim Bentinck on David, he is not very complimentary about him. He doesn't seem to identify with the character at all. He seems - like most actors - to despise the steady job and hankers after more exciting roles.

This was one of the things DH & I were discussing. (Say what you like about the storylines but he finds TA much more interesting now). We were speculating whether, if you play a character for so many years, you gradually make that character more like yourself and the scriptwriters accommodate this.
It would seem not!

Maybe he's not very self aware and is actually exactly like David!

The storylines are good for drawing in new listeners but I don't think there is enough to make them stay.

Hmph - well I like David. Solid, dependable. TB shouldn't be allowed to leave until Josh is ready to take over as a similar backbone to the whole thing. (obviously after some fall-out with pip which makes her disappear off elsewhere)

i don't find david terribly interesting as a character, but that's as it should be i think. there are some interesting SLs that his character is involved in, but he's not that exciting in himself. but there have to be characters like that, it's the same in RL. perhaps it's not so interesting for the actor to play though

Normally I like Ruth and David because at least the acting is convincing. But this storyline is so ridiculous it's infuriating. What if they leave Ambridge, friends and family, schools, sell up and move, then Ruth's mother pegs it? It's just silly.

On another topic, do you think Charlie genuinely fancies Adam or is he playing a cruel manipulative game and will threaten to tell Ian unless he tows the line, etc?

Also, will Gill shack up with Carol in her former home? That would make some interesting dynamics.

I'm not a great fan of Felicity Finch's Ruth. There is a reason that she is ridiculed for her ooooooh nooooooh.
But I do rate TB: it is difficult to play a convincing Good Guy, they can be bland, but David comes across as a solid three-dimensional character. I can believe in him; I could never believe in Tom or Rota or Adam or Charlie or...

Biscuit - they made it clearer in the last epi that they would only be moving if Route B went ahead - with the aim of replacing the mangled Brookfield with a farm that could work the way they wanted - the Heather thing I think just gave Ruth an extra push to think outside the box, if they're going to move then kill two birds with one stone.

But planning roads just doesn't happen that fast, we've had some round here discussed for decades - trying to tie it to looking after a frail elderly lady doesn't really make any sense at all.

yy errol the timescales just don't make sense wrt road decisions / heather deteriorating / farms being up for sale

obviously if they did make that decision they would want to recce beforehand, but what happens with heather in the intervening months/years before the road decision is made?

Is this what is called planning blight? Your house value plummets and you can't sell it anyway because there's a planning application dragging on.
David & Ruth must have no idea what they would actually get for Brookfield in the circs.
OTOH the land could be worth a great deal to a developer who wanted to build a housing scheme for commuters to take advantage of the road.

Isn't the first rule of house (farm) hunting that you work out what you can afford first?

I like Rooth actually. Maybe because it's nice to hear a Geordie on the radio without them being there for comedy value!

Ruth's not supposed to be a Geordie, is she - she's Northumbrian.

In reality, wouldn't 'route B' be part of a planning package including development? We've got notice of a huge project not very far from us - new roads, parkway station and massive housing developments which will totally take out a farm or two from the look of it. It somehow seems unlikely that they'd just build a bypass nowadays.

Jill has a point. Imagine staying in Ambridge after Brookfield was sold and seeing it turned into a caravan park or a service area for the road & lorries thundering by. It would break her heart and she'd be happier in Prudhoe.

But it's not going to happen. Heather will SOTMC & route B won't go ahead.

Yes I'm inclined to agree with you unitarian It's a SATTC plot line that's way OTT and I hope the SWs settle down soon (she says looking over her glasses and pointing to the naughty little boys in the back row)

BTW HOW long did it take Bert to construct 4 raised garden beds FFS??? I'll get his number and he can come and do my garden (my much younger man wot does would take much longer!!)

Ah Prudhoe's only 10 miles from Newcastle errol. I call myself a geordie and I live a stone's throw from there

ppeatfruit I thought that about Bert too! He should get a job on one of those garden makeover programmes

Clearly the sw know nothing about gardening! He must be a machine!

Also, carol bitches that he checks everything with her first which is untrue because he did the extra bed without asking

I think if they were real people(!) with a road scheme pending and a frail MIL many miles away and without a weird share scheme going with the siblings it might be a serious consideration for David and Ruth, possibly for Jill as well.

It's just utterly ridiculous for a radio programme called The Archers!

The beauty of the Archers of course (compared to far-fetched TV soaps) is that even if one of the actors wants to leave/dies the character can carry on should the SWs choose. Look at Clarrie and more recently Tony and Josh. There is absolutely no need to write anyone out unless the story demands it