❓ Archers thread #126: It’s a mystery why we’re all still listening.

[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 love to be on the Parish Council, 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/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-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 and @Taswama for thread title ideas, but I felt most in sympathy with @R4's suggestion. Is it me, or is the programme in the doldrums at the moment?

Haven't heard the 31/3 episode yet. Perhaps it's a gem.

Didn't Harrison put us all through some "no more Mr Nice Guy" blather recently? (Was it after the plausible-Philip / Horses story?) He was going to be more detached and less village-y. What happened to that? I think it's fair to say that if police found you parked up in woodland, drunk in the driving seat they'd be unlikely to give you the benefit of the doubt though the fact that Alice called Harrison might be evidence of the fact that she didn't intend to drive home. Hopefully her drunken pass will making him less likely to brush this aside as "just a lapse" as he did during their previous chat. Everyone is pussyfooting around Alice which is doing her no favours. If Brian had known about her drinking he wouldn't have given her a bottle of wine, if Susan had known she wouldn't have suggested Alice have a night on her own (what was Chris thinking of agreeing to this?) The only person who has done any hard talking about the situation is Peggy.

Not weird to me, @Mummyyyyyyyyyy! Belated welcome, by the way. I'm another near-lifelong listener. My mum started listening to The Archers in the 1950s, probably around the time it started, but lost interest when they got a TV, I'm sorry to say. (No sticking power.) However, she continued to put Radio 4 on by default when she was in the kitchen, so I often heard the lunchtime repeat or a bit of the omnibus on Sunday mornings. I started listening actively, rather than passively, when I was a student, probably around 1981/2.

Since it's been possible to catch up on the internet, I don't think I've missed an episode, though I must admit some of them have made more of an impression than others, especially recently.

Thanks Gasp0de

I'm always getting told off for leaving the car radio tuned to R4!

Chemenger
They desperately need to do some weeding out of the weaker writers.

As far as I am concerned they need to stop employing for the first time writers who can't do the job. The weakest writers seem to be the recent imports. Stimpson (started in 2002, I think) merely writes ranty melodrama and rapes, but at least he doesn't get characters' backstories simply wrong.

MayIDestroyYou
There's no law against buying alcohol, transporting it to a place, and drinking it there. Then phoning a friend to take you home. I'm not sure Harrison can conclude much more than that?

There is if you drink it in, on or near the car, or sit in the car drunk while waiting for your friend. The offence is being drunk "in charge of a vehicle", and involves being alone with a car if you are drunk, even if the car's keys are not actually in your charge.

Someone sleeping it off in the back seat of a car, with the keys in his jacket in the boot and therefore not in his reach, can be charged with being drunk in charge of a vehicle, taken to court and banned from driving for a year. This has happened, as has someone walking round the block near his car being found drunk in charge and banned.

Burns is a very poor policeman who seems completely unaware of many of the rules of policing, as well as of the laws he is employed to uphold.

To let Fallon and Pip be godparents to a child of an alcoholic without telling them is morally reprehensible, in my opinion.

Chris can not cope with Alice being imperfect, can he? He’s had her up on that pedestal for years and doesn’t have the intelligence to deal with this well. Brine and JD have her on a pedestal too, but will be much better equipped to support her crashing down.

I teared up listening to Alice and Harrison. She needs proper rehab and really good therapy, but I wonder if the root of her alcoholism is the ‘smallness’ of her life compared to what it ‘should have been’. There’s a great scene in Buffy where she’s being psychoanalysed by a psych-student-turned-vampire and he says something like ‘you have a superiority complex, and an inferiority complex about it’ and I think that sums Alice up too. I know a couple of people in real life like that too and the dichotomy is fascinating.

I find it very odd that Harrison neither reflected in the number of times that Alice was drunk in charge nor voiced concerns about how she must have been drinking whilst pregnant.

Please please will he insist that the pair of them get some help.

He must have encountered plenty of alcohol-dependent villagers and townies to know enough about agencies and support groups.

Difficult listening this week and I can't imagine that there will be a good outcome. On the plus side, at least Jade has probably left the cast.

I was taking a charitable view, Asking. I really don't want Alice's troubles escalated - alcoholism shouldn't be punished, surely, if there's any other way of dealing with things.

Fascinating Buffy reference, Therapist. Horribly recognisable.

MayIDestroyYou
I was taking a charitable view, Asking. I really don't want Alice's troubles escalated - alcoholism shouldn't be punished, surely, if there's any other way of dealing with things.

The trouble is that unless some other way of dealing with things is found and implemented, then punishment for alcoholism becomes inevitable. In Jack Archer's case (like George Best's) his punishment after fourteen years was death when his liver was no longer able to process the alcohol he kept pouring into it, which is fairly drastic and painful as punishments go. Or like someone in my family, you might fall out of a window and be paraplegic for the rest of your life. Or you might drive your car into another car and survive while a child in the other car is killed and have to live with that. There are many possibilities, but it isn't going to be simply ok if Alice is left to drink as much as she wants to, which will escalate as it already has done. There will be consequences, and since she has a husband and a very small baby those consequences will not affect only her.

She'll be back. There are a few eligible candidates in Ambridge.

Josh, Ben, Rex, Ruairi, ...

@StillWeRise

I'm not sure, I thought he was being very deliberate about checking whether the keys were in the ignition. That's a safety matter obviously but I wondered if it also meant she wasn't technically breaking the law. It's surely not illegal to be drunk inside a car?

Yes, it is, if the keys are in the ignition. Also he would have known that she had broken the law to have driven where she was. She was quite obviously over the limit.

Welcome Mummyyyyyyyyyy, I too have been half listening to TA for more than half a century - where did the time go?
Loving Gasp0's predictions - especially #8

Speaking of predictions, I haven't seen the 🔮 for a while, I shall see if I can track it down...

I am reasonably sure that if it is your car, and you are in it alone, you are in charge of that car.

And if you are drunk, you are drunk in charge of a motor vehicle. And that is illegal, and gets your licence taken away.

www.themotoringlaw.uk/drunk-whilst-in-charge-of-a-motor-vehicle/

The legal definition of “in charge” is not as straight forward as one may think and the court will consider a number of factors such as:

<span class="italic">Where you were in relation to your vehicle at the time</span>
<span class="italic">Where you were sitting if you were inside the vehicle</span>
<span class="italic">Where the keys were</span>
<span class="italic">Whether the engine was on</span>
<span class="italic">Any evidence that suggests an intention to drive</span>

^It may come as a surprise to a lot of people that even if you are asleep in your car you can still be found guilty of being drunk in charge.

In Alice's case, she was clearly very drunk. She, and the car, were not at her residence, so she, and it, had travelled to get to the place where it was parked. Also, she was sitting behind the wheel. I'd say that the chances of her not being prosecuted if any policeman other than the completely useless PC Plod who infests Ambridge had happened to see her would be somewhere between zero and nil.

Found the 🔮 lurking under an embroidered cloth. It says it is still shielding.

It says that Malice will accuse Harrison of Taking Advantage, which could get him into a whole vat of hot water, both personally and professionally but the Truth Will Out eventually. This brings us the exciting prospect of H* being interviewed by AC12, which is, as we all know, based in the Midlands, so Borsetshire is on its patch.

At least, I think that's what it said, it was a bit difficult to decipher, what with social distancing and masks.

*OMG! Harrison is H! Why did we not realise this before? Talk about hiding in plain sight!

Effing hell, Bore! That actually scared me. The thought of Harrison being a secret criminal mastermind ... Shivers down the spine.

Is Mr Mercurio known to be an Archers fan? (This could seriously mash my head.)

Incredible acting job, though. Pretending to be a bumbling incompetent who can't even find a bit of lost bunting and all the time he's been masterminding the steeliest, most ruthless organised crime gang in history. Impressive!

, Bore.
Burns by rights should deed-poll now to Scalds, so hot is the water he is heading for.

And I like Gasp0de 7-8.

New career opportunity for the somewhat underused Ian actor though - bellowing "Mother of God, you took advantage of that poor wee girl, Fella!"

I rather like the idea of Harrison being a criminal mastermind (perhaps even Tim and Victoria's boss).

Aside from arresting Freddie (that drug syndicate was muscling in on his patch) has he ever solved a crime.

I've somehow managed to avoid every single series of LoD - presumably it is incomprehensible if I've missed the previous series?

All the series are currently on iPlayer Madcats. You have time to work your way through them all before the finale of the current series in two weeks time.

Well worth it!

@Madcats

I rather like the idea of Harrison being a criminal mastermind (perhaps even Tim and Victoria's boss).

Aside from arresting Freddie (that drug syndicate was muscling in on his patch) has he ever solved a crime.

I've somehow managed to avoid every single series of LoD - presumably it is incomprehensible if I've missed the previous series?

Given that Freddie was waving his drugs around in Harrison's face, I don't think it can even be described as a 'solve'

H couldn't solve the mystery of which shoe goes on which foot.

I've always quite fancied Harrison.

@lottiegarbanzo

Actually, what I'd love is to hear the Susan actress's take on it. I love the fact that, IRL, she is an academic psychologist, who works at a research institute close to the recording studio. I don't know what sort of psychology but, indulging my imagination, I'd love to hear her, in Susan's voice but with her real life knowledge, commentating on the psychological insights and inferences of The Archers!

@lottiegarbanzo you can actually do this: Charlotte Martin, AKA Susan Carter, spoke at an Academic Archers conference about several of the key characters. There’s a link to listen to her speak at the bottom of this page:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1tBfSSFwpt900JfBYljfqcj/charlotte-martin-aka-susan-carter-on-susan-shulas-depression-and-henrys-future

I just can't believe that Chris, given she necked a bottle of wine when left alone briefly, would have agreed to this "night off". The result was obvious. Although maybe it was a test?

Oooh! Thank you.