The Archers #110: Game(keeping)'s up for Will. Game on for Lillian & Vince, Tracy & Oliver? Game over for Joe? Stay ahead of the game with all things Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to LillianGish for the title idea. Very tempted to go with MrsGrindah's suggestion of It’s all a bit crap and boring at the moment but let's be positive, maybe things will look up in the coming days ... Also very taken with Lexi's Midnight Runners - Burpers, maybe? - from Madcats.

Not at all happy about Lily not going to university. Yet another bright Ambridge woman not fulfilling her potential. Why do they do this?

Also re the spending summer at home etc - I think this is a red herring as I think any friend offering to be a surrogate would only offer if it happened at their convenience as much as possible and to suit their circumstances.

[Will] is going to get quite a shock when he finds himself looking for a job for the first time in his late 30s when he isn't particularly qualified for anything other than game keeping.

Agreed. What kind of a job does he think he's going to get? No IT skills, no people skills, no business knowhow, few qualifications (AFAIK)... Apart from very entry-level minimum wage stuff and gamekeeping, what can he do? He says he's got lots of transferable skills, but what are they, exactly?

How is he going to answer the 'why did you leave your last job?' question? MH discrimination is alive and well, and no one is going to believe that he jacked in gamekeeping because he was passionate about trying out shelf stacking. He'll end up in Ed's position, minus the Texels.

no one is going to believe that he jacked in gamekeeping because he was passionate about trying out shelf stacking.
In theory, that bit should be easy: he can make up some guff about needing a job with more family-friendly hours because of being single parent to Poppy. In reality it will be more difficult because, as we all know, very few villagers are allowed to work outside Ambridge and any potential employer will know in advance what a grumpy git he is.

Ex-gamekeeper Will at a loose end isn't going to end up being the saviour of the rewilding project, is he? A Grundy rescuing an Archer project? Surely not!

I don't think the question about jacking in the gamekeeping would be too difficult, if he practised an answer - he's a widower with a young daughter, who coped initially with family help, but had come to realise that his job wasn't viable in the long term.

I don't go on Facebook but love this post that was tweeted.

any friend offering to be a surrogate would only offer if it happened at their convenience as much as possible and to suit their circumstances

But any other friend would be likely to be in the same country. Lexi's only reason for being in the UK is to support her family. At the time she was concerned about the girls and being away from them. I don't for one minute believe she would have offered to be a surrogate if she hadn't otherwise needed to be away from the girls again - this was something she mentioned more than once including when the first attempts failed (didn't they offer to fund her being at home even if it failed?)

The whole power dynamic is wrong for it to be a really altruistic model rather than commercial. There was simply no evidence that she was more than a colleague to Adam and Ian before she signed up.

So when to listen to TA?

I recommend doing as I do, which is to download the episodes and listen to them when I can't sleep. Works a treat!

I find Clarrieluv's wifey role very believable, given that she is of a certain age and class. It resonates with my observations from when I lived in a very rural community.

I find Clarrieluv's wifey role very believable

Oh yes, but still enraging!

Belated thanks for the thread

IMO R4 it has become much worse since it has been signposted in the Radio Times as a "drama'". The families have mostly been at one anothers' throats, stories are conjured up from nowhere with new characters who will disappear later (Alastair's family being a good example; his sister had never been mentioned before the 'Surprise Party' ). The 'humour is now so heavy handed and prurient, it's annoying. Not funny at all.

I reckon it's changed soo much because the good intelligent scriptwriters have left in disgust (or have retired). Or have'nt withstood the coercion from new producers/editors.

Heavy handed symbols like the breaking of the cider press to 'possibly' herald Joe's death being another example of crap.

Clarrie is fluttering around William because she sees him as fragile and it gives her a reason to check on him. Very believeable.

With the surrogate storyline I am annoyed that they are focusing on Jenny melting down when there is so much room for an interetsing exploration of the issues surrogacy raises.

Oh yes, ppeat, you could hear that coming a mile off.

And what’s going on with Will? We went from someone defined by his work to excitedly discussing options advertised in the local rag!

I’ve had a depressed adult child- Eddie and Clarrie are soooo believable at the moment......

Yes I can understand Clarrie and Eddie treading on eggshells around Will.

R4
"The rot set in when Nigel fell off the roof..."
Actually, I think it was the passing of Phil. It's lost its way since Norman Painting went.

That seems very possible to me. Not just because of Phil, though.

I think that it probably helped everything stay in focus to have someone writing scripts who was also a member of the cast, and who had been writing for them since 1966. "Bruno Milna" must have known the programme inside out, and surely that would have been a godsend at the script meetings?

IMO R4 it has become much worse since it has been signposted in the Radio Times as a "drama'". The families have mostly been at one anothers' throats I so agree with this Ppeat. The Aldridges evicted from Home Farm (by the SWs - I know they weren't really evicted), EdnEmmur blown apart, Susan not speaking to Clarrie, the whole upheaval of Jim, Alistair and Jazzer, Pip set against David and Ruth over Peggy's silly bequest and now it appears that Adam and Ian are heading for an estrangement with Brian and Jennifer over Lexi. I've almost certainly left something out. It's just too much - any one of those events could have sent ripples through Ambridge, all at once and they might as well have crashed a plane onto the village and had done with it. There's nowhere to go for any light relief either unless it's of the Carry On variety. Ambridge used to feel like a place you might want to live - now it no longer feels like a real place, just another sad soap set.

I think the last time it was in a mess like the one it is now was when Godfrey Baseley was retired and
Malcolm Lynch became editor in 1972
Charles Lefeaux became editor in 1973
William Smethurst became editor in 1978

and even that wasn't as nuisancy as having the discontinuity we've suffered of late.

Sean O'Connor was (probably) appointed in July 2013, announced on 5th August 2013, first credited as editor in December 2013. He left and started his job at EastEnders in May 2016.
An acting editor took over at that point.
Huw Kennair-Jones was appointed by August 2016, his appointment was announced by the BBC on 13th September 2016 as taking effect "later in the month", and he was first credited as editor in January 2017. In October 2017 it was announced that he would be leaving the programme to start work at ITV, and he left almost immediately.
There was then an interregnum during which Alison Hindell acted as Editor.
The position was taken up by Jeremy Howe; it was announced in February 2018 that he would be taking it but he was not actually credited as editor until November 2018.

And I suppose each of them wanted to "make a mark" on the programme.

(I think Lynch did actually crash a plane on the village, as well as a church bell falling and only just missing someone in the same week, and also a girl cycling home being sexually assaulted. It was a bit fraught while he was in charge.)

I completely agree @LillianGish and @ppeatfruit.

People who want full on drama can get it from television - most people have one nowadays.

Weren't the rewilding group supposed to come up with pretty concrete plans for acquiring land by yesterday?

I find Clarrieluv's wifey role very believable, given that she is of a certain age and class. She's only in her 60's, isn't she? And people in their 60s were growing up in the 60s with the gradual awakening of feminism. I can understand her role-differentiated marriage, from what I've seen of my rural relatives, but I can't imagine her feeling it was her ordained role.

I totally understood Ed getting frustrated and he really didn’t like Will’s comment about him being a single man again.

It's probably a case of be careful what you wish for. I am beginning to feel it was better under SOC's reign.