💥 Archers thread #119: Has the Bull reopened? Will Ambridge pull through? We’ve all dozed off and haven't a clue. Moan about the monologues 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 we should have monologues all the time from now on, 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/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 PPE on the last thread for the title suggestion, which I tweaked a bit.

As for the current state of affairs: here's how it could have been done. www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRSVdfQWAjNhNu1AtABYjw Nigel Pargetter returns, albeit in spectral form. I loved these.

I don't love the current set up. Very, very hit and miss for me - but I am too much of an addict to give it up. Looking for a silver lining, maybe the rather clunky trot through the Aldridge family tree last night was helpful to newer listeners. It is rather convoluted. In 12.5 minutes they managed to explain that Adam and Debbie are Jennifer's children by different fathers, that Debbie's father Roger Travers-Macy adopted Adam, that after he and Jenny divorced she married Brian and that he (secretly) loves Adam and not nearly so secretly adores Debbie. I don't think they explicitly stated that Kate and Alice are Brian's children with Jenny, but they did manage to squeeze in a mention of Siobhan and Ruairi, and explain that Xander is Adam's son by a surrogate and has no genetic connection to either Brian or Xander's other father Ian. Phew!

This whole "Ian does all the caring, Adam has no idea what to do" narrative would be more convincing if we'd heard Ian caring for Xander rather than so often hearing Adam with him or having taken him somewhere.

Ian has not spoken (except in old repeats) since early February. We were not even sure whether he'd come back from the funeral in Northern Ireland before lockdown started, that's how absent he has been.

Monday mornings are the worst for me at the moment. I always used to listen at work the morning after the episode, so Monday morning meant listening to Friday’s and Sunday’s episodes. I still haven’t got used to having nothing to listen to on a Monday morning.

I was ready to sit and listen at 7 last night - doh!

I think Adam's monologues are fine, and I think it's sweet how he is with Zander the fish.

@Roysnewshirt

The new versions of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads are a cruelly-timed reminder of just how good monologues can be...

As one of the newspaper reviewers commented, this is because a master writer like Bennett has his characters talking to us, whereas The Archers are talking to themselves.

Next time this happens (and it looks as if it's inevitable) they really, really need to be brave and break the fourth wall. (Although one assumes they'll be on top of the tech by then, and will have longer to plan, so there may be no need for monologues.)

The great problem (IMVHO) with the TA monologues is that no one pinned down a definitive recipient for all their musings. There hasn't been any single creative impulse - just a need to fill airtime. Those directed at the cricket team or the local radio station at least had a point. But the so-called interior monologues have mostly been pants because the speakers were quite clearly directing their remarks at someone-not-themselves; someone who needed to be told what had just happened, or provided with basic background info about, say, the speaker's family background.

If instead they had taken the Tom Forrest (omnibus) route of inviting us in, (this is how I remember it, at least) or the Pargetter Triptych's acknowledgment of an audience, the whole thing might have been far more convincing.

Even someone saying wtte "God I wish I had someone to talk to!" would be an improvement.

But talking to Bess definitely didn't work.

Harrison's contributions to tonight's episode were dire, I'm afraid. Jolene's weren't much better. Kenton came off best, but the bar was set low.

And again, everyone was being nasty, one way or another. Jolene was the worst: she clearly dislikes and despises her husband, but do we have to hear about it so obviously?

I don't think she dislikes and despises Kenton. I'd say she finds him hard work at times, and who can blame her for that? His blood relations have always found him a trial. He does have redeeming features. He has a sense of humour, can be witty, he's outgoing and sociable and possibly there are attractions of a more physical nature which I sincerely hope we never hear about on air. He can be made to buckle down and work. I think they enjoy bickering and scoring points off each other.

I have not heard her say anything to or about Kenton that was not disparaging or offensive for at least the past year. If she doesn't dislike and despise him, she has a very funny way of showing it.

And he, poor sap, has not yet realised that the way to stop her from doing something to upset him is to tell her it was his idea and he is all for it -- at which point she will move heaven and earth to make sure it doesn't happen.

Joelene brings nothing to the party. I don’t particularly like Kenton but he is suggestible and would benefit immensely from having a nicer spouse. Joelene is the kind of person I would work hard to avoid. Presumably we are meant to think she is as hard as nails but with a heart of gold (cf her support to Elizabeth when she was at rock bottom). But her kindness is too selective and her consistent contempt for Kenton makes for uncomfortable listening. As if he hasn’t suffered enough growing up with Shula as his twin...

So who’s done what at Beechwood? Presumably it’s a red herring so it’s not Gavin or Philip being dastardly?

Well, the only households we know there are K&P and Joy. And there's no way Joy would be chucking rubbish around. Sounds more like Gavin, but he's away, isn't he? (Would be great if this led to the unmasking of the gang master - but too much to hope for.)

Perhaps it will be a damp squib - nameless unruly teens from the affordable end of Beechwood?

Oh yes, Gavin’s chez his mother. I can’t see Kirsty chucking stuff like that. No idea about Joy. There’s lots we don’t know about her. So probably Philip or nobody we know.

David will accuse Joy, and be wrong to do so.

Presumably it’s a red herring so it’s not Gavin or Philip being dastardly? Shame. Nothing would stop Kirsty marrying Philip quite so well as finding he'd done something as un-ecological as dump rubbish.

I wonder why no one tells Adam actor to wind it down several notches. He sounded positively demented in the scenes with Xander.

The great problem (IMVHO) with the TA monologues is that no one pinned down a definitive recipient for all their musings. There hasn't been any single creative impulse - just a need to fill airtime. Those directed at the cricket team or the local radio station at least had a point. But the so-called interior monologues have mostly been pants because the speakers were quite clearly directing their remarks at someone-not-themselves; someone who needed to be told what had just happened, or provided with basic background info about, say, the speaker's family background. An excellent observation PPE to which I would add the monologue form also highlights which characters are thinly sketched and lack depth in the first place - which is why Harrison’s appearance on Monday was so dire for example. Truly a new low in the format - Harrison is policeman (and not a particularly convincing one at that) and that’s about all you can say about him.

Presumably it’s a red herring so it’s not Gavin or Philip being dastardly?

I assumed it was just to allow David to carry on whinging about somebody else since that is all he ever does these days (unless talking about Goldenpips).

I'm struggling to remember the last time he had a good word to say about anyone but Pip and his monologues just make that even more obvious.

It was David last night, wasn't it?

I sat beside the radio. It was on at a normal volume. No interruptions or unusual distractions.

Don't remember a single word ...

Don't remember a single word ...
I was listening. Honest. But I was a bit bemused by all this talk of which house the rubbish came from - I must have momentarily fallen asleep at the point where Beechwood was mentioned because I don't remember it at all.
If fly-tipping / ground-glass problems causing whole fields full of crop to be discarded is such a headache that even TA knows about it, you would think that it would be routine to walk the field beforehand to check for such things. Or even check from a drone camera. If only there was someone in Ambridge who could offer this service ...

I'm quite impressed by how quickly they got some Bull reopening stuff in. I'm wondering if it was a few late inserts, or an episode they wrote earlier but have been keeping back till pubs were allowed to open.

Hah! Now I remember - hazily. Fly tipping. David found something from Beechwood ...

It's no good. Nothing he's said monologically stays in my head for (it would appear) longer than an hour and a quarter.

The previous fly-tipping story involved David as well. That was a builder dumping yew from a hedge he had taken out, into a pasture where four cows ate it overnight and died.

The one before that was a Brookfield cow limping because someone had thrown a broken bottle into the field where she was grazing. And Jet the sheepdog cut his paw on a broken bottle there, too. They really are unlucky. You'd think they might be on the lookout for dangerous things being thrown into their fields: every farmer I know has to be, since a plastic bag can kill a cow. (And anyone who walks in the country is asked, please don't dump anything, and if you see anything dumped, please pick it up or if it is too big, please tell them at the nearest house.)

I can't remember any fly-tipping that wasn't at Brookfield, in fact, though the sky-lantern frame damaging a heifer last Halloween was at Home Farm.