The Archers - It's Full Of Pants! Listeners are allegedly leaving in droves. Will Peggy also FOHMC?

[PseudoBadger]

She's got a whole calendar to use!

Please go!

I hate hate hate this story!

Gosh that was excruciating. Adam is such a tease. Almost wish he'd come and flirt with me.

New Pip is the most wooden acting ever.

Lost the will to listen half way through............

No one else fell in love with darling, drawling Adam who doesn't realise he's already been outfoxed?

I hadn't listened for the past week and then caught up last night because I couldn't sleep and listened to tonight's episode live.

That's 15 minutes of my life wasted. This absurd charade is really getting on my tits. I stopped watching footballers' wives too. I hope you're listening so'c and I hope you have the shortest editor run in history. You're hopeless

Happy to be proved wrong on Rob & Tom. I much prefer to imagine Tom canoeing rapids and wrestling wolves in Canadian forests in a bid to get home!
At the same time I long for someone to expose at least one of Rob's deceits.

Is it possible Knob has been in touch with Tom telling him not to rush back?

It's a load of old bollocks that there hasn't been a conversation between rob Helen and pat about how to get in touch with Tom regardless of whether or not they know rob set him up in the job

Ooh, I liked the farm management issues stuff. All those inputs/outputs. Not overdone for me. (Am at least 4 generations removed from farming ancestors).

I guess Lillian but if your dad was at deaths door would you take the risk? But I think when they sit down to decide on stories they agree on including an element of implausibility (or a shovel full based on most of the storylines)

I wish the dopeys would just sod off as well. I can tell that new pip is going to be just a irritating as old pip!!

I just felt the farming stuff was a bit topical textbook. The farming bits don't seen to flow as conversations that well.

I don't think they do enough farm talk but it needs to be more natural and not shoehorned in (like the tutor visit).

I just don't get it at all. There is just no way that the Dopeys would do this and I can't imagine Peep agreeing to leaving the family farm. She didn't even want to go to yewnee to learn farming, she wanted to learn on the job on the farm but they convinced her to go on the promise she'd have a job when she finished . And now they are all upping sticks and fucking off to a new "family farm".

It's just unbelievable . How many times have I bloody written that recently!

The best farming conversation they've had recently was the conversation about milk between ed and johnny

That would be interesting LG. But how would he prevent Pat etc from leaving hundreds of rather stressed voicemails?

Unless Rob had originally given them a fake phone number for Tom?

Ohhh Zero that sounds suitably crafty and Rob-like!

Agree with you all about tonight's episode, and am fed up with D and R - they've farmed Brookfield with blood sweat and tears for two generations and now have smug pound signs in their eyes (Is that possible?!?)... Doing the dirty on family and behaving like this is their new normal. They used to love their land, be reasonably ethical and trustworthy but both seem to have had a character transplant and are virtually unrecognisable in all this. The siblings will be quids in and will behave like baby birds.... Oh and how is Heather doing, we never hear. The deep roots and tapestry which connected the community are being pulled up. I think the poster who said it was like looking through different windows( like an advent calendar!) without any kind of linkage, sums up what has happened. It is fast losing it's reality and charm

But it doesn't work if he has the Internet in his pocket...

Perhaps Tom has indeed been "upcountry" on some manly Canadian task, well out of reception range?

Maybe he's become an itinerant reindeer herder

I only half listened tonight but I did smile at the extended conversation about black grass and neonics. The farming stuff always sounds stilted to me but in real life we would use such a lot of short hand that wouldn't make sense unless you had farming knowledge - like most professions I imagine. I bet the medical conversations between doctors on Holby City bear little resemblance to real life. I remember a conversation between Hel and Rob a while back:

H: 'darling you're late'
R: 'yes we had a cow with a retained placenta'
H: 'poor thing, is she alright?'
R: 'we had to get the vet to treat her.'

In our house that would have been:
Me: 'you're late, everything OK?'
DH: 'yes, just had the vet to cleanse a cow.'
Me: 'oh right, did you give her a washout?'
DH: 'yes and it's in the medicine book. What's for tea?'

Which wouldn't make much sense to you guys I imagine! I should think it's hard to make those conversations sound natural when you have to make it so clear what they are talking about...

They have had some sort of communication with Tom since he left, haven't they? (medium of mime again...)

Or did I dream that?

Imagine if you were a new listener to TA and heard tonight's episode. On face value, you have that nice family saying that they are all leaving. They are apparently going to be replaced on the airwaves by Charlie, that bloke from RB and darling, drawling Adam talking technical stuff about sprays, neo-nics and returns on investment.
Would you ever tune in again?

Meanwhile, in today's "are the SW on glue": why was Charlie willing to pay for lunch for RB and Home Farm? It's suppliers who butter up their customers, not the other way round.

guineapiglet - agree with everything you said about the Brookfield story line. It doesn't seem in character and the whole thing is moving far too fast.

I want to hear bigger family discussions about all of this - not just Ruth, David and pip. This is actually bigger than the Nigel storyline in terms of shaking Ambridge to the core. I'll be even more annoyed though if they don't end up moving and the whole thing is never spoken of again. The whole point of the archers is the slow burn storyline and the never forgetting.

For the first time in over 20 years, I'm considering stopping listening...

And I want Tom back. Now. Not because I particularly like the character but it's utterly implausible that he's not there