SOC has soaked Ambridge to the core across a never ending weekend. Discuss The Archers post-watershed here.

[PseudoBadger]

Deluged damp squid or not? And has Peggy been assisted off the mortal coil by Rob yet?
And when will JD and Brian remember Debbie?

I thought she said "I've changed my will. I'm going to leave everything to you and your sisters ..." But I could be wrong!

CUP I already spend far too much time obsessing over the programme and this thread. I'm not giving myself permission to get involved with any other Archer-related distractions.

Yes, she said "I've changed....." not "I'm going to...". It's done.

Justin's toy boy. I hadn't thought of that.

Was that Tom at the party or Charlie? They sound exactly the same.

But Zero the episodes are only between 1.5 and 4 minutes long.
If you charge from listening to TA to Shambridge, you will be saving time

Brilliant idea.

Why didn't I think of that?

Yes I noticed Rob taking Tone's crutches and,telling Richjohn, to put them 'there'.

I mean change, not charge, but you got it anyway. With Shambridge and this thread, you'll never have to listen to TA again

Interestingly, all the actors in Shambridge seem to be female (and spot on! )

And Sabrina Thwaite has voice....

a voice

has voice is a lovely phrase.

Speaking of which - in this new, fourth wall broken Ambridge environment - I fully expect to hear Freda having long, humorous and articulate conversations with Bert (and perhaps the new chef at the Bull) for as many years as she spent, voiceless, before she died.

Cutted I am pretty sure that all the voices in shambridge are done by one single very talented woman impressionist.

Knob can't think that delaying the divorce is a viable threat??

Jess is a little wooden, but a hard role given that it's all telephone delivery and people tend to be a little more vicious over the phone than they would be face to face.

But she's like that 'in person'!!

Both times she's confronted Helen I can totally see why Helen would think 'rob's right, she is unhinged'.

Helen's predisposed to believe Rob's version and if we're uncertain about Jess even though we see right through Rob's lies then Helen is bound to believe Jess is crazy.
Only a DNA test will prove it one way or another and if he's certain that he's not the father then he'd be providing the sample toute suite, assuming he's a rational person.
I think he's the deranged one.

Back when Jess first arrived in the village to join Rob and was befriended by Jennifer she seemed like a more three dimensional character and was better acted too- the party scene with the salmon was pretty good. Where the storyline lost me was when she reappeared and seemed to have become a pantomime crazy bitch. It was almost like they totally re-wrote the character. The whole thing annoys me. What we should have had was listeners seeing how he emotionally abused Jess, she finally gets the strength to leave him and he moves in on unsuspecting Helen, possibly eventually Jess (having rebuilt her life) has the opportunity to warn Helen that he is a Bad Lot. Instead we have a totaly weird situation in which she had sex with him but now just wants to hurt him but yet still appears to be jealous of Helen.
The baby plotline was unnecessary. Can anyone recall if Helen and Rob had already copped off before we heard Jess as a voiced character? I am struggling to remember how/where/when H and R first got together.

Also Jess has emerged from an EA marriage and has had years of being told she's weak-minded. Her POV has been dismissed and belittled over and over and he's still dismissing her contemptuously.
She's not going to merely shut up and go away now. She's said before that she just wants him to recognise what he's done to her. She's vengeful but has good cause and now she has a baby to look out for and her own self-respect to repair.
His parents have recognised the baby and seem to have no problem with Ethan having the Titchmarsh name yet Rob's still stone-walling, ie, continuing to abuse her.

Goodness, I've just listened to last nights episode. "Shagging anything with a pulse!?"
This is The Archers
:o

There was some back-story about her caring for a sick parent when he first came to Ambridge.
He and Helen had DTD for some months before she came to the village.

I assume that Jess was taking a break from the marriage and came back rather more bolshie. He couldn't cope with that one little bit.

I suspect the casting of Jess was about setting us up to sympathise with poor, dumped Helen and to leave us with an element of doubt about him for quite a while.

Enoch - you're missing my point. It's not that I think she is deranged but whenever she actually 'appears' the acting is such that she sounds deranged and I can't quite get into the story!

I would have much preferred Jess just leaving and the ea with Helen reaching a natural conclusion rather than an ott mystery baby story

I agree Jess is not well acted.

I think point of baby story is to expose Rob as a cheating liar. Cheated on J. Then cheated on H.
And I also suspect when baby story comes out either H will be pregnant and/or she will somehow twist herself round to forgiving R.
I think it is a quite a good device for showing that H is already cowed enough that she won't say ffs have the DNA test.

And also thinking back, the first jess knew about Hllin was when she turnrd up on Valentine's day. So when she slept with rob she maybe thought it was a reconciliation. She turns up a week later to find him cohabiting with H and has obviously realised they were at it behind her back. H knew about J. J did not know about H. So it makes sense she's not her biggest fan. She did after all invite her to cater her party etc.

Jess was helping her mother nurse her dying father. Rob went off to the funeral and it was shortly after that that he told Helen it was all off and Jess was coming to Ambridge.

Can't remember the sequence of events after that. I thought Jess knew well before Valentine's Day about Helen, but I could be wrong.

I thought I was agreeing with you BYOS!
I'm certainly not disagreeing. Whatever we think of Helen as a character, she does have a beautiful voice. Jess has an irritating, hectic voice which doesn't make her a particularly sympathetic character. It also gives Rob's assertions that she's deranged some credibility as far as anyone sitting on the fence is concerned.
I see logic and credibility in what Jess is doing but I'm hovering between Jess being badly acted or the casting being a deliberate choice to 'weaken' Jess as a character. She was hired by VW so we can't blame SOC!

Oops yes I see Enoch - totally agree with your last post!

If it turns out that Jess is nuts then that will be a very eastenders storyline!!!

In soc's (limited) defence - vw was also a little too sensationalist at times. It's a shame they then picked a plot over character producer to succeed her and amplify the issue

VW did, on the whole, cast quite well IMO and kept in mind that it is radio. At least we always knew who was speaking!
(Someone's now going to mention OldPip as one of her poorer casting decisions.)

I Don't think old pip was a bad actor. She just had a horrible character to play.

New pip is inconsistent, the wrong age and wooden. I just hope she gets someone to coach her on the accent at least

I'm close enough to go to that Mailbox event, but I'm afraid my Ambridge dedication doesn't stretch that far.