💥 Archers thread #118: Back in time for The Archers - catch up with the catch up until the scriptwriters catch up! Discuss The 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 think Philip Moss is in line for Employer of the Year, or other unusual views.

Spoilers: OK, there aren't likely to be many for the foreseeable future, but when we do have some, 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/3853783--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-5-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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! This thread starts at a very odd time for The Archers, longest-running soap opera in the world. No new episodes expected till late May , and when we do get them they're not going to sound like normal, as the actors are recording separately at home and the BBC is attempting to cobble it all together. Tough times for the sound effects team!

The BBC is filling the gap by repeating key episodes from the last 20 years. Some of us here will have heard them before, but not all, by any means, so if you want background on what you hear this is the place to ask.

Over to you! I must try to catch up with the repeats at some point today.

Let's have Kirsty wondering why Philip keeps 'popping out' and then have Eddie reflecting on how he knew P was dodgy.

Annabelle Dowler did post that lovely 'keep out - recording' poster she did for her home studio so let's hope this happens, Teenplustwenties.

Was it you who posted it here, PPE?

twitter.com/annabelledowler/status/1257942485218795522?s=21

I've put a link in again for anyone who didn't see it first time round.

He also bought her new ones I think.

That was a nice interchange between Josh and Jill, although it has to be admitted that he forgot to lock the hen house, which was why Jill needed new hens in the first place.

Your friend's theory is interesting Roysnewshirt. I don't think Pip was the favourite when she was going out with Jude but more recently yes.

I think Gasp0de is right about David's character. A similar thing happened when he found his toy farm during Sean O'Connor's Let's Pretend Brookfield Will Be Sold Storyline. I just remember lots of 'how risible' tweets. Josh is doing well, mainly because he is being given more demanding scripts, instead of Hey I'm An Unkind Entrepreneur one liners.

I genuinely just thought: why can’t they have David talk to Ruth and Jill as they’re allin the same house So part of me clearly believes this is real...

@SparklingLime

I genuinely just thought: why can’t they have David talk to Ruth and Jill as they’re allin the same house So part of me clearly believes this is real...

You think that’s bad, Sparkling, sometimes I catch myself wondering why the intern doesn’t point out that something is a bad idea.

Actually, what might have been entertaining would be a series of monologues from the creative/producing team reflecting on the infinite number of decisions that inform the characterisation of Ambridge. How they 'see' various people; what practical or technological issues might influence a storyline; what compromises have to be made - etc.

I'd prefer that to Harrison. Or David. (I did wonder if perhaps Tim Bentinck is one of those people who doesn't have an internal monologue, so doesn't know that they don't sound like a declamation from the main stage of the National Theatre.)

Hang on, @Chemenger! The intern has to be be real?! 🤯

"Plenty of cricket talk, which I like."

I have heard no talk about actual cricket at all.

It has all been Tracy going on about how Harrison is a lousy captain and how if she were captain they would win matches, and Harrison going on about her tactics for winning the captaincy. It might as well have been a badminton team, or hurley, or marbles, for all the cricket involved.

OK, plenty of village intrigue about petty matters, which I like. We never do hear any real cricket, and I'm not competent to analyse what we do hear. I just have a vague fondness for the cricket sound effects and associations.

Was anybody else listening to the afternoon play on Radio 4 (Personal Shopper)?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jhnw

Quite light but very listenable and a fantastic example of what can be done with lockdown drama. The characters speak to each other over the phone or do an audio diary - eg the husband takes himself to the spare room to self isolate. It's not Ibsen but it's very listenable. Archers scriptwriters - watch and learn!

Watch!!!! I meant listen

Yes, I was thinking the same, nettie. It was well executed (though stretching credibility and dangerously syrupy in places).

Enough people who really do know their stuff seem to have said there is no technical reason to prevent two or more Archers actors recording at home and being spliced together to appear "together" in the programme, so I assume an editorial decision was reached (in a bit of a hurry on 15th March or so) and the tech and actors were not asked to do that. We know they have the tech out with at least twenty of the cast, and that they can rehearse on Zoom, because "Some of the cast have been recording themselves and others, like Dowler, have been linked up to a sound engineer and director. There have also been a mix of Zoom rehearsals and individual runthroughs with directors."
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/24/the-archers-returns-to-radio-4-with-ambridge-under-lockdown

Soliloquy is very hard to write convincingly, unless the soliloquiser is as mad as a box of frogs, or is Hamlet. (Or both, to be fair.)

Someone commented recently (sorry, can't remember who) about the difference when listening through headphones rather than to the radio. Yesterday I spent my walk around the town where I live wondering how I'd never noticed before just how many of my neighbours keep chickens. 🙄

But again Josh was believable but David wasn't!

It was 100% treacle PPE but quite nice for all that. Thanks for the link Asking. I read that Corrie did the opposite. They saw how things were going and wrote and recorded as many episodes as possible in the last few days before lockdown.

Lifted with permission from another site:

"We are told “Archers actors are recording the programme from the comfort of their own homes while guidance on safe social distancing prevents any work in the Archers studio in Birmingham.” Which is fine as far as it goes. But why are they recording monologues rather than doing a distributed recording?

"I’m a self-taught amateur audio technician. I’ve worked on podcasts and on role-playing game groups where nobody’s in the same room, but each participant is using their own computer. The way we do this – basically 2-6 people talking, improvised in real time – is to use a videoconferencing service such as Jitsi (or one of the other, privacy-invading ones); each of us records our own voice (either on the computer we’re using anyway or on a separate voice recorder); then I load the recordings into an audio editor, each as a separate track, do noise reduction, sync them up using a recording of the conference which I then discard, and mix them together.

"So why is the BBC not doing this? Some possible reasons:

"Audio colour and background noise. People recording in echoing or noisy environments sound quite odd, especially if other people in the scene have more neutral environments. The “street” way to fix reverberation is to hang blankets on the walls; books are also great. This isn’t generally much of a challenge but you have to fix it before the recording. This also applies to monologues anyway.
"Recording quality. Cheap microphones and noisy computers can make things sound fairly horrid even with quite aggressive noise reduction. I use a Tascam DR-40 which cost me £135 five years ago and goes for about the same now even after the collapse of the pound, and that’s at the high end of amateur kit. I feel that this shouldn’t break the BBC’s bank (especially since if the built-in mic isn’t good enough you can plug into it a standard XLR-jack microphone, which you’d think they could borrow from the studios and send out to the actors). This also applies to monologues anyway.
*Timing. Recording on computer is often a fraction of a percentage point out of time sync with other machines, so in a two-hour session you might have two people in sync at the start of the recording and ten seconds out at the end. That’s fixable in software, in return for some quality loss; but more importantly, in a two-minute scene it’ll barely be noticeable.
"Leakage. You need headphones good enough that the sound of the conference isn’t leaked onto your own recording. I use a pair of £2.99 earbuds so I think this probably shouldn’t be a concern.

"I really cannot see why the techs of the BBC shouldn’t be able to create a “virtual studio” like this to allow the recording of multi-speaker audio drama, so I am forced to assume that there is some managerial reason for not attempting it."

The quote in the first paragraph is from www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2yBMJcnzNJdn7vMcPFnd5tl/archers-actors-record-at-home-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic and what I mostly feel about that is "I am so glad Charlotte Martin is able to resist flashing her gnashers for no particular reason."

I watched the DumTeeDum live with Keri Davies last night and I believe he explained quit well why they went with the present solution.
Basically: the Archers has a fairly long "lead in" between story idea to broadcast. At the time the decision had to be made they had no idea if half the cast were going to be sick with the virus or not. Each recording is taking 4 times normal due to "stray noise" eg toilets flushing - which is a big issue if you are supposed to be on Lakey Hill.
They had to make a decision very early on and go with something they could guarantee.
And in addition the decision makers had to decide: which story lines to "park" , which to resolve in lockdown etc.
Keri also said the writers are being given a much more prescriptive brief, and at least two are working on each weeks output.

I wonder if they'll go back to studio recording soon? I'd have thought they could get at least four people together safely, though the likes of Jill and Peggy will presumably have to stay home.

That's interesting, Molly. Here we are now ten weeks on and it's easy to forget how things were back in early March. I'm not at all happy with how things have gone in the UK (understatement) but it was looking back then as if it could have been even worse, so that thinking from the production team makes sense.

I really hope that next week doesn't focus on David Cardboard's self indulgent whingeing. Josh deserves a better character/actor to work with.

Even as a small child I remember Phil Archer as a puzzlingly disruptive character, unarguably the centre of the community. Brookfield now always seems peripheral to village life

Yes the Brookfield Archers are very much incidental to the programme these days but Brookfield characters are largely tedious, maybe that is deliberate to broaden the scope for other, more varied characters.

Although that is at odds with TA giving up on even token "multicultural" characters.

Yes ... Since the suppression of Usha, and Nolly's return to South Africa things have been rather monotone. Aurally at least. Of course half the unheard village might be non-Caucasian, (and I wouldn't welcome any ridiculous portrayal of alien 'culture' when those residents might well be rich City drones, enjoying second home leisure) but, as it's radio, it would be nice to hear some resident accents from further afield. (Rather than just flown in for seasonal work.)

Phil, of course, was a magistrate and, in my very distant memory, seemed always to have interesting local tales and dilemmas to recount at home. They replaced that with David's farming community position (remind me) but distant farming policy is rather lacking in personal interest.

Since the suppression of Usha, and Nolly's return to South Africa things have been rather monotone

And those were both peripheral characters with short burst of activity. When Usha originally joined it seemed that there was an effort to introduce a real character with a background. We have a rural village but one within commuter distance of Felpersham, Birmingham etc but still completely monotone, even the characters who move in from cities or other areas.

They replaced that with David's farming community position (remind me) but distant farming policy is rather lacking in personal interest

The NFU role? Yes he has none of Phil's real community engagement or sense of responsibility to a community. His only outside interests are self interested.

Phil was a magistrate, active member of the Church community and a part of village life. Neil and Lynda are both much closer to Phil's engagement with the community than David.

@Chemenger how are you doing that new quotation style?

I’m on the desktop Mumsnet on my iPad. You click on “quote” on the blue strip above the message you want to quote.

Thanks. I am on the mobile site not the desktop site (or the App) so don’t think I have that option, is it new? I don’t recall it from last time I used desktop.