The Archers. No need to share the thread with anyone else darling, we can have a lovely time just us together. It must be Henry's bedtime.

[PseudoBadger]

New thread for the Omnibus.

Thanks Gypsy and yes Gasp0de it's my first- clearly I wasted my youth listening to TA so was very slow off the mark finding a man I wanted to have children with .

I think that the SWs are just playing with us re the David and Ruth portent of doom scene. To kill one of them off would be cataclysmic and SOC has already been so very "hahaha fooled you all" about anyone ever believing they'd leave Ambridge.

Controversially, I don't find Matthew such a bad actor. Maybe hormones affecting my ears!

Blimey eggs/legs! Who needs an archivist when you have Lowfield? Perhaps it's a sign of the times.

Unfortunately the SW don't appear to be reading Lowfield!
I remember Helen's first pregnancy and her and Emma having very different ideas eg about the birth.

I'm honestly utterly bored of the Rob storyline now. It's getting like HWMNBN - one note all the time and you're just listening to it being churned out every 2nd or 3rd episode with no end in sight. When it's done like that and every alternate scene in an episode it becomes like a caricature of what they're trying to show which is really poor for such big issues as domestic abuse and homelessness. It also feels massively manipulative of the audience to me.

But emotional/domestic and financial abuse is usually something that creeps into a relationship slowly. There's no way a man (usually) can become abusive and manipulative within a couple of months of the relationship starting. It can take years for the abused partner to become so worn down and confused by it they become helpless. Helen is on the way there but still got some way to go.

If the story is to be true to life (and the Archers is supposed to be real time) then it will drag on a while.

I think it can be telescoped in this case, Booming.
We know little about Rob's past but we do know he could be extremely nasty to Jess, had marital problems and had already targeted Helen before Jess came back. We know he has a domineering mother and feels second-rate to his brother so his has self-esteem issues. He's a natural bully.
We know Helen's past which he also knows and her stubbornness which has mostly been directed towards her family making her unlikely to admit to a crisis in her relationship with him. He knew early on that she could be persuaded to deceive her family, was desperate for a relationship and had her own weaknesses he could work on.

Oh you're righ Booming the trouble is (and I fully get that it's partly function of limited minutes each week) is that every single sodding time we hear Rob at the moment it's him being an abusive domineering prick. He's become a totally one-dimensional character and no matter how gripping and dramatic that single plot is it is tedious and predictable to listen to.

The best characters in the Archers are always those with many different facets to their character - eg Lynda who neatly ticks the 'bossy do gooder' box but we still get to hear her at work, socialising, with Robert etc being more than that - when her and Lillian are talking about Mungo as a recent example. With Adam in addition to the Charlie/Ian plot we get him talking wtih Brian about the herbal lay, discussing farming with David etc. All we ever hear Rob doing at the moment is manipulating and domineering sometimes with Helen, other times with Pat, Peggy, Fallon, Tom but it's all the same side of his character every single time.

Not sure Rob has the time or mental space to be anyone but the creepy manipulator at the moment. He has rent, hunt, balls, the coming cricket season socialising, and soon four mouths to feed - if he hasn't gained complete control of the Bridge Farm finances before the dowry runs out he's going to have to carry his fine self off to the job centre.

It would be unrealistic for there not to be some cataclysm quite soon; he simply cannot afford to maintain his current way of life.

Thanks for The Forsyths tip Gruach - just listened again while doing my chores. Wonderful.

I have a nasty feeling that they're aiming to boil up to a massive crisis around the time of the birth, probably coinciding with Knob running Bridge Farm to the brink of disaster. Which means we've got at least another three months of this to go (sigh).

To be fair, we have recently had Rob saving Shula with her horse?

I doubt Hellin will go full term. I think she will go early and/or be hospitalised.

If she is hospitalised and Rob is left with full care of Henry for some weeks - that won't be good.

It was good wasn't it Lil'G? But they've now done everything I remember from being chased out of the room as a child so I don't know what to expect next. (Jolyon has been one of my favourite men's names ever since. Never met one.)

Yeah, Scary, but the 'saving Shula' episode was so unconvincing (horse expert saved from mild peril, forgets all horsey knowledge and previous opinions in undying gratitude...) that we're tactfully pretending it didn't happen, to save the SWs further embarrassment.

lance 😁😁 can we give them a C for effort?

My very own special version of Rob (exdp) turned up today. He told me I was looking tired ( I'm not, but his way of control is so so similar to Rob's). He didn't call me 'darling' though. I had to try not laugh.

Well do we think the rob sl is building up to an ee style murder?

Knob opens door. 'Oh, hello, I wasn't expecting you, what? Aaaaargh'. Dum te dum te dum te dum

big - you should have laughed

Oh I hope not BYOS.

But, as I know I've said before, having given him PR the SWs are in a bit of a bind if they don't have a plan. Because, even if he is driven out of Ambridge in disgrace, he will keep coming back. The only reliable way for Helen to regain sole control of her child(ren?) is for him to stop breathing.

Soap editors love a baddie they can bring back every few years to liven things up. So much so they even bring back those who have met a certain death.

So him scuttling off to prison for fraud (Berrow) or because the villagers hound him out works well as he can then come back

A bit like the Nick cotton of ambridge

A huge pudding

Evil

Stodge, pure stodge. He thinks he knows exactly what he's doing.

I know exactly where I'd like to stick that

I don't want Jim to SOTMC