Game of Farms: The 4 Houses of Ambridge. Bleak House, Boring House, Sitcom House and About to Breach the Terms of Their Tenancy House.

[PseudoBadger]

Never mind the yoghurt - who is making the Sterling Gold?!

Think you wrote what you meant the first time Gasp0

Some clever person on the BBC TA blog has suggested Jessica Dromgoole for the vacancy. Inspired thinking. I've really come to value the Friday evening Home Front omnibus - I think it was at the end of last week's that I found myself shouting "utter bastard " at the radio. It's been tremendously consistent - and you have to listen; it's the opposite of wallpaper radio.

Looking her up I found that she and SOC were appointed at the same time to their respective posts. Only thing is, Home Ftont goes on till 2018 and I wouldn't like her to be distracted from it.

(Sorry - clever person in the comments section.)

Gruach I've gone from hating Home Front to avidly awaiting the next episodes - I get quite grumpy at lunchtime when it isn't on. It should be mandatory listening for the new editor: this is how you develop plot, character and public service broadcasting. By telling an actual story, rather than dramatising crisis after crisis.

I'm hoping that things can only get better... It is hardly as though everybody is wringing their hands and despairing of SOC's departure, so I reckon they must know that they've got to sort it out.

I don't think cancer research should be spending time looking at chat forums!!

The archers is a product with consumers. It's important to keep your customers happy - if you change the product too much you risk losing your core customers and risk not finding a new core (cadburys?).

Of course they shouldn't be guided by what people are saying wrt writing but they should get an idea of what people are thinking.

One of the key criticisms of soc was the loss of character. I hope they have taken note of that.

I thought last nights episode was really badly written. Not often I think that!

I think it has reached an all-round new low this week in particular so I'm very relieved SOC is moving on.
I gather he's going in mid-May which is close to the GADD and I hope the new editor is found soon and is able to get a grip on this and other stories.

I think SOC's departure explains a lot of the lazy slip-ups in recent weeks. I have long believed Knob is modelled on SOC (and have posted to this effect before) - refusing to listen to any advice from other SW, bullying anyone who disagrees, getting rid of the archivist and thinking that would serve to cover his tracks and now he is getting the push choosing to leave, just as Knob did from Berrow. Let's hope his replacement is someone who has more of an affinity with radio drama and who loves the characters and sees where they take the story rather than thinking up plots and trying to make the characters fit in regardless. By his own admission the Knob/Helen storyline was only accidently good - he didn't realise what as happening until listeners drew it to his attention. It's since he realised and started directing it as such that we have had Patbot and the very many loose ends which have required every other character to act against type.

I would accept a couple of braking turns from the new editor to get things back to credibility.
Pat waking up would be a good start a well as David remembering that there's supposed to have been a flood enquiry.

I gather he's going in mid-May which is close to the GADD and I hope the new editor is found soon and is able to get a grip on this and other stories.

Just wanted to say I'm delighted to see my acronym being taken up (to give it its full name the DadDadDad-GADD ), although obviously it's got a bit of a limited shelf-life...

So:
19 May - GADD

20? May - 50,000th post on these threads (hard to predict could be weeks either side)

? May - SOC leaves

And Pip could fall into the long-forgotten sink hole!

Oh, and the Fairbrethren could be written out.

Pip is ok IMO (everyone on here HATED the old one)

The Fairbrethren are interesting in that they symbolise the new "I fancy making some money at farming, have not the inkling how to do it , but I'll go on line and it'll be fine". Types. It's a good way to get the new listeners into TA too.

I hadn't thought of them that way, ppeat. You have a point.
Perhaps they could be re-cast. Yesterday I was convinced Pip was speaking to Tom but it turned out to be Rex.

The voices 'thing' is a universal problem for radio drama producers and casting departments. It seems they didn't give it enough thought when casting the FB's.

That's a fair point ppeat - it hadn't occurred to me but I guess farming newbies in the show may well be appealing to new listeners. And things can't stand still.

It's just ... None of the SWs seem to have any enthusiasm for any story except H/R. (Maybe a little for Lil and her new beau.) I rather liked the idea of trawling the archives to build new characters - and I wouldn't mind the brethren if they sounded like real people. The Pip and Matthew thing is dreadful - compared to H/R their conversation is exclusively at KS2 level. The SWs just can't be bothered with any subtext.

I assume the BBC has known about the EE flit for considerably longer than we have. Three months would be an outrageously short time to bed in a new editor - I'd want 9 months to mull over my plot and character ideas ...

Why do we think mid-May? I would have thought more like end of April (two months) but keen to know any info

I disagree with Ruth Jones on the Fairbrethren though, I've said before how sick to death I am of the old "siblings always fancy the same person" thing. Fa(i)r more likely I think that Toby will get more and more dodgy/fraudulent, dragging Rex (woof!) down with him, until Rex has to be David-like and upstanding and split things off from his brother. Then maybe he'll go into business with Tom and be Helen's next stop post-Rob? (How old is Rex compared to Helen?) Or be an acceptable match for Peep.

BTW just thought how similar are Rex and Toby to David and Kenton, and even to Jennifer and Lilian, and Kate and Debbie. Note to scriptwriters - same sex siblings don't always come in matched pairs of good/naughty.

I'm still puzzled about what the hell the Fairbrethren are meant to be doing at the moment. They seem to have abandoned geese, which seems a bit mad when they built up a customer base last year, and seem to have done eff all in the last two months except talk to people about the pastured hens idea. I think we reckoned they really didn't make much profit on the geese, so either that allowance from Daddy is pretty humungous or the Brighton venture really is a drugs supply ring.

I thought they were supposed to be doing geese again - can anyone remember when they bought the goslings last year?

I think they got them during the summer.

What happened to the new road? There was months of trauma over it and then suddenly no-one spoke about it any more. Was there one episode where the idea was binned and it was then never referred to? That's the trouble with many TA plot threads. There's a huge build up and then it's all resolved in 2 sentences and never mentioned again.

Rob and Helen will apparently be discussed on Feedback later.

2Rebecca, in the vein of TA storylines being forgotten about before completion, someone contacted Farming Today earlier this week in response to their request for further ideas for Archers-related conference papers. She suggested the Ruth Archer guide to miraculously recovering from breast cancer in 24 hours.

Yes the new road! That storyline really gripped.me and the bit when Peggy was reminiscing about the lane where she used to look at the bluebells etc really resonated. Then it just ...went away.

I don't think the word is 'officially' out on the road yet but Justin heard unofficially that it is a non starter because of the flooding. So he has abandined all his plans for buolding around the road, shut down Berrow and started looking into other things.
So the route will be A or C.

On Feedback now

She suggested the Ruth Archer guide to miraculously recovering from breast cancer in 24 hours.

That was covered in Katherine Runswick-Cole's paper on the disappearance of disability.

Lots of medical stories in TA - but they're used as narrative prosthesis, i.e. for the plot. So Dan's childhood arthritis helped Dr Locke & Shula's affair to happen and then was never mentioned again. Helen'showed anorexia - only mentioned when the plot demands it. Chris's cleft palate when he was born - gone. Ruth's cancer. Brian's epilepsy. Mike's eye. Various cases of depression. Jack's dementia was mostly the story of Peggy as carer. Tony's back on his feet, no hint of a spinal injury.

There are no long term stories of living with chronic conditions, impairment and disability. They are missing out on loads of potential drama - they could have had Beth any at school locally, everyone having to deal with it, the reactions of other parents and so on. But they sent them all off to Coventry Birmingham instead, and she's only mentioned as a way of making a space for Helen and Henry to go to the steam railway. #bringbackbethany says Runswick-Cole.

I enjoyed that paper, it really made me think.

Gruntled If you 'do' geese, I suppose it's a seasonal thing and you'd be buying goslings in the summer or whenever is the right time for them to be mature by Xmas. There's not much of a market for goose eggs ASFAIK.

The road (or lack of it) has been mentioned recently by Justin and or someone else, I think. It's easy to miss these things rebecca