Roll up roll up! It's nearly Apple Day in Ambridge. Grab a slice of Borset apple cake and see who's got the longest peel in The Archers.

[PseudoBadger]

I'm so happy with the return to the little things. Enjoy the new thread!

Didn't Anisha talk about a husband (not just a husband but HER husband) during Sunday lunch? Not that necessarily stops anyone in Ambridge if they fancy someone else. Maybe I wasn't paying attention though. I am finding so many of the current female voices very samey - and very annoying, so tend to switch off my brain mid-episode.

Pip's response to Toby's thieving and also the general crap animal husbandry is so very unlike her. She might always have been a PITA but she'd never have overlooked the animal care. And it's Josh who is the dishonest one of that family.

Is Alice being played by a new actor? or is it just her personality traits that are new?

The only thing that can possibly happen to Rob that will have any integrity towards women being abused is his charge and conviction for coercive control and rape. But that won't happen because TASWAMA.

There seem to have been a few great minds thinking alike with tonights posts.

I suppose they had the nanny episode to show how (over)confident rob was of helens conviction and him not p&t getting custody. Hope Anisha isn't a one-off, as they've managed to find someone with a distinctive voice at last.

I did give alice a little boop tonight for her 'you're a natural goose' line.

I'm hoping for a scene when Pip and Toby find 'a visitor from Brighton' at the Brookfield kitchen table with Jill eating home made fruit cake.

Should we take bets on Toebee poisoning Ambridge? Or maybe just Rob …

Talking of Rob drinking, is he doing rather a lot of that?

Toby is trying to out Grundy the Grundys. Pip's tolerance of his sense of entitlement (Lynda's drying herbs ffs) was a storyline to far for me. He's a waster - we've got it- so let's move to the denouement quickly.

I wonder if they are trying to keep Rob around til the new editor arrives. This was always Helen's story and, like Shula, I'm not really bothered about Rob's angst. The invite to the shoot is just bizarre.

Other than that, I'm loving TA now. It is a joy to listen, and I even laugh out loud at some episodes. How quickly and how well order has been restored. Why wasn't Alison Hindell appointed as editor?

This new Toby storyline is just stupid.

Perhaps Rob will injure himself on the shoot, have a bit too much of Brian's claret with JD's excellent lunch and drive into a slurry pit, revealing Stefan's skeleton?

I was going to say drive into the Am but then remembered Freda Fry. We haven't had a good dramatic car crash since Mark Hebdon

I suspect I am more invested in this than is healthy- but I will be incandescent if anything happens to him that isn't a conviction and imprisonment for coercive control and rape. I'm not sure how I would cope. I can only hope they are playing with us with all these car crash/suicide/getting sectioned red herrings.......

.

I suspect that 'we think a coercive control SL is veh important' was made up after the fact once they realised they'd made Rob into a slightly more sinister character than originally intended. And now they've dealt with it (to an extent), they're just going to brush it under the carpet (along with Stefan and Rob's book-cooking)

But I'm a terrible old cynic. I do hope you're right!

and what about the arsons?

Well, this explains a lot.

From Twitter: Tim Stimpson ‏@tim_stimpson

Boxes are still unpacked but I've finally unloaded the removals van from Ambridge and arrived in Albert Square!

So SOC has poached him for EE? Tim Stimpson is a very good writer but he was very much pushed forward the last couple of years and given the high profile weeks to write (stabbing, both weeks of the trial, I think). And now he's left TA, I assume.

Well as the stabbing and trial were both shit I'm glad he's gone

Ahh I found you! Place marking

I agree, redshoe. Tim Stimpson weeks were much poorer and more fitted to TV. I wish him well in EE but I'm glad he has gone.

The remaining scriptwriters are proving it was editorial direction rather than a skills gap. Good for them.

Thanks, Gasp0, for the info.

Makes sense. His episodes were audition pieces for Enders. Definitely sounded that way!!

Well done script writers on picking the ideal name for Toby. I've never met a Toby I've liked. They are generally self absorbed posho bellends like Fairbrother jnr.

But haven't we done the two brothers one diligent and the other feckless to death what with Phil and Jack and David and Kenton.

.. and Will and Ed (in former times).

How did I forget Will and Ed, I guess Ed is too busy being all downtrodden to remember his teenage tearaway years.

Afraid my memory is decidedly sieve-like just now. I need a reminder on what TASWAMA stands for.

I agree we need a conclusion to the coercive control SL. And the only good conclusion would be a trial and prison sentence. In a sense though Knob has served his purpose and is now just annoying and frustrating, so he could be disappeared from SL. This would only be realistic if they reopen the Stefan story - which has luckily (though probably accidentally) left unfinished. So they could up the stakes a bit and indeed find a decomposing body - or Stefan could come back to Ambridge and spill some beans. And JD and Daveed could be given some magic memory dust. If Rob has killed Stefan then he'd be locked up for the next 20 or so years - so, with my medical Hx, I am quite sure he'd not bother me any more.

And, lastly, someone mentioned Clive H recently. Is he not due for release soon? What was his sentence? GBH? and escaping from prison?

Armed robbery, surely? He held up the post office at gunpoint.

Of course, EB, it was armed robbery. What kind of sentence do you get for that?

'The Archers scriptwriters are misogynist arseholes', IIRC.

The trouble with having a successful prosecution for coercive control and/or rape is that althought that is what should happen in real life it probably wouldn't. So the production are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Go with what we'd all like to see happen and they will be accused of giving false hope to real women in similar circumstances. Go with something more strongly resembling reality and they will be accused of putting women off going to the police because nothing will come of it.

All of which might have been a good reason for not doing an EE version of a coercive control storyline in the first place, but that ship has sailed, unfortunately.

He's currently in for setting Woodbine Cottage on fire with Chris and Jill inside, isn't he? Plus cruelty to horses. As he was on probation when he did all that (after serving his time for GBH), I hope it increased the sentence.