🐷 Archers thread #127: Discuss the boars and sows of Ambridge here - or should that be bores and soused? You decide.

[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 live opposite Joy, 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.)

These threads normally last around a month. When I started the last one, we were bracing ourselves for the Mystery Play, but that storyline, which had never exactly set the airwaves on fire, fizzled out and has (I hope) gone away, never to return.

@LillianGish proposed a new thread title which I'll use instead as a scene-setter for this thread. What a carry on - Nurse (Ben), Sergeant (Harrison), Camping (Kate), Jack (either one of them), Regardless (all of us for continuing to tune tune in)

What a carry on, indeed! Other storylines sputtering away:

• Alice, Chris, Martha - Have they split up, and if so where is Alice living? Will there be a christening and who will be godparents? When will the Aldridges and Carters find out about Alice's drinking? Too much to hope that Alice will get blind drunk at the christening party in full view of the entire village, I suppose. I'm still clinging to my hope that she lamps Alan after a suggestion that they pray together.

• Will Rex find a new home for his pigs? If Elizabeth weakens, will the pigs escape and disrupt the Lower Loxley life drawing event on Monday? Might they stampede, knock Ross out and devour him?

• Will Jazzer go to work for Neil? (This isn't exactly a cliffhanger. Of course he will.)

• Will Justin bury Lilian under the patio? Not a jury in the land would convict him, I feel, if they were played a recording of that appalling cackle and her gloating about the daffodil photograph.

• Will the life drawing event on Monday be a brilliantly amusing interlude, exemplifying how to write character-driven drama, with both comic and more serious moments? Answer: No, obviously. I may have to listen from behind a cushion.

There are more. I find myself struggling to care.

Oh, and one final mention - I've proposed a webchat with the Archers editor. @MayIDestroyYou's idea. You'll find it here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/4231475-Webchat-idea-The-Editor-of-The-Archers-Or-another-Archers-production-team-representative

Over to you!

I was going to BOOP Emma for telling Rex and Pip off, but then other stuff happened.
I felt Jenny was missing from the scene between Alice, Chris and Emma. She might have let Emma try to calm things down at first, but I don't think she would have stayed (audibly at least) in the background when things were obviously escalating.
Great scriptwriting @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g !

Taswama
I felt Jenny was missing from the scene between Alice, Chris and Emma. She might have let Emma try to calm things down at first, but I don't think she would have stayed (audibly at least) in the background when things were obviously escalating.

That's a really good point: her daughter was clearly being shouted at and was breaking down in tears, while her baby had been handed over to someone else; Jennifer would have been over there like a shot. As would most mothers if their daughter was in such obvious distress.

As would most mothers if their daughter was in such obvious distress.
All JD's children seem to spend their lives in constant stress and sometimes distress. She's probably immune to it by now.
However, a disturbance to a Social Event that she is co-hosting, that's a different matter ...

Thanks Asking, Therapistinatabard, JanFebAnyMonth for filling in the gaps in my recollection.

@R4

And there’s not a lot of evidence of [being an unfit parent] Apart from being so drunk when pregnant that she passed out in a ditch. And asking Harrison to rescue her from being drunk in charge of a vehicle ... oh dear, is it going to come to light that H didn't follow proper procedure. hope so

The ditch was before she was a parent, and before she knew she was going to be.

I’d forgotten the Harrison episode. She wasn’t actually in charge of Martha, and I doubt whether Harrison would want to put something in writing about that. Alice’s legal rep will cast doubt on it by reason of Chris’s friendship with Harrison.

I can see that friendship coming under strain too

R4
"As would most mothers if their daughter was in such obvious distress."
All JD's children seem to spend their lives in constant stress and sometimes distress. She's probably immune to it by now.

Alice was the one of them who didn't, until that precise scene. (Well, to be fair, nor does Ruairi. And Debbie is about nine hundred miles away and has been for a decade and more, showing a very level head and no high-strikes at all when she does come over from Hungary. It's only really Adam and Kate who go in for histrionics on a regular basis.)

Maybe Jennifer went into shock that the calm one was in such a state, and fainted....

I'll put in another prediction. A dispute about the paternity.

Just a guess.

I've been thinking the same @ILoveShula. The chap from Price Baumann being the prime suspect. Anybody else remember Alice moaning about him but also being very cagy at the same time?

But surely the reason she was cagey was because she was actually being reprimanded at work for coming in late/hungover, probably missing deadlines etc, because she was drinking? That’s why she was cagey but trying to make out it was him that had the problem?

I don’t know, there’s years’ worth of incidents to be explained now.

And Debbie is about nine hundred miles away and has been for a decade and more, showing a very level head and no high-strikes at all when she does come over from Hungary.

Because she learnt something from university and her lecturer husband. And was she one of the ones with Simon Pemberton? She hasn't always had a drama-free life.

True. But that was twenty years or so ago, and she hasn't had any conniptions at Jennifer since, so Jennifer has probably forgotten how trying she could be when she set her mind to it.

I agree that Jenny would have interjected. She's spent the morning with Alice behaving oddly, and she immediately interfered with Susan's party favours. It makes no sense that she'd have stood back whilst Alice became increasingly distressed and was clearly under attack from both Chris and Emma. I am not impressed with the standard of writing at the moment.

Yes, it was so obvious that Chris/ Alice / Emma was recorded separately. Agree unrealistic. However I am sure that the next episode will be Alice and Jenny, probably recorded in the same session as the gown- sewing and champagne conversation.

Not that I've ever tried to book myself or DP into detox, but surely they encourage/signpost to support agencies? I seem to remember that Chris didn't venture further than the car park. Wouldn't Harrison or Alan would make discrete enquiries about local support?

Like many of the "difficult" storylines, they seem to start well but then it is as if nobody has thought through what should happen after the "shocking incident".

The human slavery SL simply fizzled out with an unlikely confession and speedy (off radio) trial. I feel robbed of what would have been good drama.

I'm a bit surprised that there appears to be no outside agency involved with Martha's best interests. A premature baby (though that seems to have been forgotten) of a known alcoholic mother just goes home and everything will be fine.
Gp? Midwife? Health Visitor? Social services?
Alice has a phone buddy and that's it.

Also, while I'm here: Jennifer!
She has a lifetime of quite complicated experiences one way and another and surely has much to offer in the way of wisdom and insight. Instead she's portrayed these days as a one dimensional snob with no independent thoughts or opinions beyond ridiculous catering details (for eg).
It might not suit the narrative but she would have picked up that something was amiss with Alice.

So I guess that suspending my disbelief is the way forward and the Eastenders-type writing is how it's going to be.

I wasn’t listening at the time so if I may prevail of more consistent listeners: what is meant when they say detox? Was it proper rehab in a medical facility, including teaching mechanisms for dealing with addiction? Or did she just go somewhere and dog cold turkey unsupported for two weeks?

*go cold turkey

@Madcats

Not that I've ever tried to book myself or DP into detox, but surely they encourage/signpost to support agencies? I seem to remember that Chris didn't venture further than the car park. Wouldn't Harrison or Alan would make discrete enquiries about local support?

Like many of the "difficult" storylines, they seem to start well but then it is as if nobody has thought through what should happen after the "shocking incident".

The human slavery SL simply fizzled out with an unlikely confession and speedy (off radio) trial. I feel robbed of what would have been good drama.

I am still quite puzzled same as you - total lack of fall out?

@DeusEx

I wasn’t listening at the time so if I may prevail of more consistent listeners: what is meant when they say detox? Was it proper rehab in a medical facility, including teaching mechanisms for dealing with addiction? Or did she just go somewhere and dog cold turkey unsupported for two weeks?

I think it was meant to be the former- it was a proper detox facility- but the portrayal in terms of follow up and ongoing support is currently more like the latter.

It was a private facility for which Chris and Alice paid their life savings, as far as we could make out. Certainly they used the money Brian gave them to put towards Martha's requirements to pay off the credit card they'd used to pay for it.

We don't have any idea whether it was meant to be any good or not. Another patient was seconded to ring up Alice and tell her she's doing well for a week or two, but that seems to be the only follow-up she has ever had from them.

The human slavery SL simply fizzled out with an unlikely confession and speedy (off radio) trial. I feel robbed of what would have been good drama.
Nooooo. Remember Helen's trial where we had to suffer the jury's debates and all we could hear was twelve randoms talking over each other.

Like many of the "difficult" storylines, they seem to start well but then it is as if nobody has thought through what should happen after the "shocking incident".
This is what happens when you drop 'everyday tale of country folk' in favour of 'rural drama'.

R4
Nooooo. Remember Helen's trial where we had to suffer the jury's debates and all we could hear was twelve randoms talking over each other.

That was dire. But Tommy's crop-trashing trial in 1999, which was broadcast over the same number of episodes but without an extra hour on Sunday afternoon, was very well done.

Lowfield on the final day of the actual trial, in fact:

Tuesday 2nd November, 1999
The jury is out.
Foreman, Terry, Hannah, Bob, Craig, Rachel, Elaine, Clerk, Crown Court Judge
We are a fly on the wall of the jury room as we spend almost the entire episode listening to the deliberations, the only respite a brief return to the court where the judge, on hearing that they still cannot reach a unanimous verdict, tells them that he is willing to accept a ten to two majority.
Seven of the jurors seem more vocal than the rest, with Steve the foreman barely keeping sensible discussion to the fore - not so much "Twelve Angry Men", as a "Dozen Dozey Locals" and there certainly wasn't a Henry Fonda character to skillfully bring unanimity on the back of reasonable doubt.
The whole point of the jury system is to bring a mixture of experiences to bear on the case and we had a biology teacher who tried to simplify the talk of gene transfer, a mother of an asthmatic six year old with strong opinions about allergies and pollen, a younger women who thought that just because the defendant bore a passing resemblance to Brad Pitt that shouldn't be enough to let him go (every though her vacillations eventually brought her back to a Not Guilty vote) and the chap whose wife was mugged in broad daylight two years previously and for whom violence cannot under any circumstances be condoned.
We heard them take a few votes, although with no clues as to which side was nearer the majority. We heard some strong opinions to guilt and to innocence and there were definite voices keeping the question of the honesty of Tom's beliefs in the minds of the twelve. The prospect of not reaching a verdict, declaring the jury hung and just having done with it started to seem attractive to some of them. It seems that 10-2 is achievable, but which way ...

And the verdict was announced the following day.

Nooooo. Remember Helen's trial where we had to suffer the jury's debates and all we could hear was twelve randoms talking over each other

I really enjoyed that. The "randoms" included Dame Eileen Atkins, Nigel Havers and Catherine Tate. And a resurrected Nigel.

I also can't believe JD didn't pick up on the fact that all was not well with Alice (although I suspect during next week's episodes there will be lots of self-flagellation and "I knew something was wrong..") Very unrealistic. Especially as her almost 100 year old mother realised almost as soon as Alice fell pregnant that there was trouble ahead.

The human slavery SL simply fizzled out with an unlikely confession and speedy (off radio) trial. I feel robbed of what would have been good drama.

We don't know there won't be more fall-out yet but also, they were struggling to deal with all the challenges of recording in lockdown, which they seem to have found harder than most of us think they should.