❓ 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.

That’s so true about Alice not really having a personality. It must be hard for the actor having to do alcoholic Alice when she’s always been so bland. Someone said they switch off listening to Lillian and Justin - I’ve always switched off listening to Chris and Alice as they’re so dull. But yes it does say maybe there’s not always a reason. Or maybe a person can be suffering but appear (boringly) normal.

I think Kate is a brilliantly written character - really interestingly explores a massively selfish and annoying person and how they can have their good points and people who love them, which is very true to life. She’s horrible but every scene she’s in is very listenable.

Loved the Fallon and Harrison scene too - grown-ups dealing with messy stuff realistically.

Alice absolutely should be arrested and have it all come out and that would better for her in the long run. But Harrison is probably hesitating because she’s a friend and she has a newborn baby and she’s ill. A teenage drug dealer doesn’t have the same ties and made his decisions freely. Harrison is failing but I can see why.

Also love the jazzer scenes at the moment. Another great character. So in general I’m enjoying it but cannot stand the endless rewilding arguments, ugh.

I think Alice should almost run over Lynda snell (not kill her obv, Lynda is immortal). That would get everything’s out in the open.

@TherapistInATabard

I despise Justin and Lillian so automatically tune them out when they appear. Lillian’s laugh makes me want to hit things

I sometimes think that I am the only Lilian hater. Good to know I'm not alone! I loathe Lilian's cackle. It embodies her: smug, self-satisfied, I'm-alright-Jack. Kate may be an awful person but at least in her mind she thinks she's being / doing good. Lilian doesn't care about anyone but herself; she is only nice when it doesn't cost her anything.

I presume there will be a point, in a few episodes' time, to that excruciating scene

I think Alice should almost run over Lynda Snell (not kill her obv, Lynda is immortal). That would get everything’s out in the open.
There was a throwaway line about somebody driving very fast and I assumed it was Alice in a tizz after speaking to Fallon. Again, it may be laying down foundations for later on ...

@TherapistInATabard

I despise Justin and Lillian so automatically tune them out when they appear. Lillian’s laugh makes me want to hit things

The "comic relief" was excruciating. I also hate Lillian's cackle.

Boop for Fallon over the last few days.

Surely the most dramatic person for Alice to knock over would be Susan. Or possibly Neil.

I do think having Susan as a MIL must add to the horrible difficulty of “coming out” to your family as an alcoholic. No chance of keeping it private. Plus of course the enormous importance of booze to JD, Brian and especially Lillian. Amazed really that Peggy doesn’t worry about them more given Jeck.

They can't possibly do someone running someone over again. After Helen and Mike (mentioned above), Ed crashing and breaking Emma's leg, 'running over' surely jumped the shark with Nic and Matt and was put to bed forever with that blasted peacock.

@R4

I think Alice should almost run over Lynda Snell (not kill her obv, Lynda is immortal). That would get everything’s out in the open. There was a throwaway line about somebody driving very fast and I assumed it was Alice in a tizz after speaking to Fallon. Again, it may be laying down foundations for later on ...

Good thinking @R4, I thought it was Fallon on her way to have things out with Alice, but you might be right...

I don't find Kate horrible (but I wouldn't, would I), just that her whole world revolves around her.

I'm not sure about Lillian. I used to like her but she seems to have become a caricature, and the cackle is irritating, and the 'daahling'.

I certainly don't want Neil or Lynda run over, but if Pip is going to be run over, please may it be with a tractor or combine harvester.

I predict that Alice will run over Hilda Ogden and in her fury Peggy will reveal the truth.

Lilian and Justin was obvious filler. Missed opportunity to have Lillian musing about taking a bottle of bubbly round to Alice to wet the baby's head or to muse about her family history of drinking while looking in her memory box. But no, a total borefest about a daffodil costume. I think the SWs feel they have to remind us that characters exist and just have random recordings of time-independent nonsense that they can slot in.

NOOOOO!!!!

Have only just listened. I loved the L and J scenes, very funny and realistic! And the resent was good too, a good episode. Maybe I am a freak....

We still don't know who Justin's Borsetshire ancestor was, do we? When he first arrived, he talked about some distant local connection but it's remained a mystery. I was hoping something in his mini-memory box might connect to that but I think it was generations ago.

I've always hoped it would be someone poor. Like he might be a distant cousin of Jethro Larkin or the Horrobins. But, it might have been Squire whatsit (Lawson Hope?) who originally owned a lot of the land.

Peggy having a cat killed by a relative driving carelessly has already been done.
To put an (unsquished) cat squarely among the pigeons, Alice mowing down Keer-ruh, or Poppy-pore-little-mite, or Jack, or at a pinch Rosie has better potential. Plus, I like cats.

Or she could just put Martha down in a cot-death-friendly posture, of course. Much more dramatically satisfying, and it would avert any future comeback on the prod team for either letting the child be undamaged by maternal drinking or handling any difficulties resulting from it badly.

What a horrible thought. I think that definitely won't happen, not with a whole crowd of people lining up to whisk Martha away the minute Alice gets near a bottle. And thank god for that.

What @theThreeofWeevils said.

That’s so true about Alice not really having a personality. It must be hard for the actor having to do alcoholic Alice when she’s always been so bland. Someone said they switch off listening to Lillian and Justin - I’ve always switched off listening to Chris and Alice as they’re so dull. But yes it does say maybe there’s not always a reason. Or maybe a person can be suffering but appear (boringly) normal.

But remember how we all thought Philip was boring.

TheThermalStair
What on earth was going on with Lilian and Justin tonight? They both sounded like they’d forgotten their characters’ voices for the whole first half, not to mention (I suspect) being recorded in separate sessions.

It seems likely that it was recorded in separate houses; by this point would it not have been recorded during the lockdown that has been going on since Christmas? There was usually as much as six weeks between recording and broadcast, and it may be longer now there are only four episodes a week instead of six, but Christmas is now more than sixteen weeks ago.

Oh yes @lottiegarbanzo, that was inserted at one point wasn’t it?

I sometimes think that I am the only Lilian hater. Good to know I'm not alone!

You are so not alone @R4! I can’t stand her either. And hearing Justin crying poverty, unable to discuss business plans because he is waiting for his ship to come in when the rewilding barns are sold was also crazy.

It would be great if Lilian and Justin could become silent characters. That became clear after the scenes with the purple velour matching tracksuits last summer. Their characters have run their course. I would have thought Simon Williams’ agent would be after a better role for her client but may be the hours suit him.

@lottiegarbanzo

We still don't know who Justin's Borsetshire ancestor was, do we? When he first arrived, he talked about some distant local connection but it's remained a mystery. I was hoping something in his mini-memory box might connect to that but I think it was generations ago.

I've always hoped it would be someone poor. Like he might be a distant cousin of Jethro Larkin or the Horrobins. But, it might have been Squire whatsit (Lawson Hope?) who originally owned a lot of the land.

I recall no mention whatever of his having had a Borsetshire ancestor.

During his first actor he talked exclusively about business, and was said to be a hedge-fund manager not a real-estate dabbler as he is now. At a much later date and a different actor he took Lilian to show her a cottage about to be demolished for a road to be built, and said that it had been his mother's he had previously told Peggy he was brought up in Rhodesia, where his parents lived and his mother didn't leave his father although she ought to have done, so it was not his childhood home but there was nothing about it being in Borsetshire and a certain amount of speculation on boards at the time about where it might have been.

Captain Philip's still boring, just evil and boring :o

I remember that cottage visit, it wasn't that. It was when Justin first appeared and there was a throw-away remark about some long-distant family connection with the area, which implied near Ambridge, not just wider Borsetshire.

I hadn't realised he'd changed actor though! Justin's voice consistently makes me think 'just cough and clear your throat!', which I'd though had always been the same.

£10 says Alice will have an accident with Martha in the car. Loose pigs on the road. All witnessed by Jazzer.

The first actor was Terence Harvey, who was Well Known and a feather in O'Connor's tuft-hunting cap -- but he became seriously ill (and died, in fact), and Justin didn't appear for quite a while until a new Known Name had been found.

When he first appeared (I could go and listen to every episode in which he appeared during that year and next, there were not many of them) his past was entirely shrouded in mystery and he was not planning to live in Ambridge or have anything to do with the place; he put in Charlie to manage the estate for him and had no more to do with it. His function seemed to be exclusively to be unpleasant for Brian.