🐷 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!

Emma is awful.

Rant alert...

I don't personally know any alcoholics and yet I'm still aware that it is an addiction/illness... I think most people have had sufficient exposure (through media, TV, etc.) that they'd think "I should be worried, Alice needs specialist help as she can't just stop".

Yet everyone surrounding Alice (except Peggy and now Jennifer) seems to be so ignorant. And why didn't Chris at least receive a 'booklet for partners' or something explaining the nature of alcoholism to him? If I was in his shoes I would have at least Googled for information and educated myself.

I know it's a plot device, but the lack of realism is really irritating me.

The Archers listening experience should be like being a fly on the wall in a real life house as opposed to thinking 'oh, this is all for dramatic effect, what rubbish/plot device will the scriptwriters come up with next'...

I'm starting to think I need to step back from listening for a while. Sigh.

I know it's a plot device, but the lack of realism is really irritating me.
The Archers listening experience should be like being a fly on the wall in a real life house as opposed to thinking 'oh, this is all for dramatic effect, what rubbish/plot device will the scriptwriters come up with next'...
I totally agree. I don't know if they have changed or I have but it doesn't feel right. I know that they had some weird stories back in the day but I never seemed to have a problem suspending my disbelief like I do nowadays.
It used to be the case that listening intently and having an encyclopaedic knowledge of the programme was an aid to listening, now it is fast becoming an irritant.
And this.

@DeusEx

Just listened to last episode. Isn’t Emma an absolutely dreadful piece of work! And making out Alice was beyond the pale for coming into Ed - woman, you slept with your husband’s brother and later married him!!

I thought Alice’s admission to Jenny was excellent. Felt very realistic in how Jenny responded too. I felt you could feel her steeling herself - it wasn’t just ‘oh well that’s ok’, if was ‘I’ve seen this before, I’ve experienced this with my dad...we will overcome.’

See, I thought that it was odd that Jenny said “we’ll get you through this” with such confidence because she had indeed seen it before with her father and he did not get through it. I also thought it was weird that Jenny, after living with Alice for several days, and being on the alert due to what had previously been said about Alice, had to be TOLD that she was an alcoholic. Would she not have worked it out by then?

I think it was better for Alice to tell her than it would have been for Alice to be asked. Perhaps Jennifer knew that? And also knew that if asked, she might lie and then feel she had to go on telling that lie?

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I think it was better for Alice to tell her than it would have been for Alice to be asked. Perhaps Jennifer knew that? And also knew that if asked, she might lie and then feel she had to go on telling that lie?

But I’m not sure she’d even have had to ask, she would have seen her drinking.

Good news, Keri Davies has tweeted that he's been asked to write for some five episode weeks.

@Zzelda

Good news, Keri Davies has tweeted that he's been asked to write for some five episode weeks.

This is very welcome news!

Now we just have to hope for decent quality writing... thinking out loud here, I wonder whether part of the reason the writing seems so woolly at the moment is because they're trying to maintain the same lapse of time (i.e. a year in Ambridge) but obviously can't include the same amount of detail to tell the story (lack of script/air time). Fingers crossed the jump to 5 days will make for better listening!

Hope that makes sense. Should probably go to sleep now!

Oh, that is good news!

Although five episodes still means they're short-changing us.

Has no one ever smelt the alcohol on Alice's breath?

@JoeGrundyWasMyRoleModel

Has no one ever smelt the alcohol on Alice's breath?

Early on, I think the suggestion was that she was downing bottles of vodka.

I can certainly smell gin/wine/beer a mile off, but I think our bottle of vodka is easily a decade old.

Good to hear about the extra episode AND one writer per week (maybe it will seem a little less disjointed).

Lots and lots of mints?

I can live with 5 episodes a week, like it used to be. I never fully approved of the Sunday evening episode, especially as it meant Friday evening never got a lunchtime repeat.

I'm with Ebearhug. I always thought the Sunday episode was a bit of a filler - eg cricket matches (and Shula's infamous fish paste sandwiches, not ). The exception was Rob's stabbing (I think). It seems a reasonable compromise.

So will I get to hear Friday night's episode on Monday lunchtime? It always catches me out!

Before I get too happy, can anybody remember whether the Mystery Plays have been ditched (I have a nasty feeling Lynda might be busy writing her own)!

The mystery plays were being postponed; since that decision, we've heard absolutely zilch about them.

@nettie434

I'm with Ebearhug. I always thought the Sunday episode was a bit of a filler - eg cricket matches (and Shula's infamous fish paste sandwiches, not ). The exception was Rob's stabbing (I think). It seems a reasonable compromise.

Rob's stabbing took place in a hangover set of episodes (I forget what O'Connor called them) which ran over Sunday 3rd April, 2016 and Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th, all of which happened within less than 24 Ambridge-hours.

Ye Great Fludde (which also featured Rob) was like that, too - one night of action lasted a week. Further proof that SOC was a wrong'un. Normally, TA action is more or less on the right day as first broadcast.

There had been a few occasions before him when two days in real life were one day in TA, but usually they were late one night plus early the next morning, as it were. O'Connor was right that Grace's death did not all take place in a single episode, wrong when he claimed it was spread over three episodes and very wrong when he claimed we had to wait until the following day to learn whether she was alive or not -- the last words of the second episode were Phil, brokenly to his parents: "In my arms ... On the way to hospital ... She's dead!" which were the first words of script written by Norman Painting aka Bruno Milna.

Painting is clear in his autobiography: that week was broadcast "live" as an "experiment", each episode being rehearsed and recorded on the day of its broadcast so that nobody could leak anything to the press. On Wednesday 21st September, Phil and Grace were at a party at Grey Gables, which was broken up by Grace's discovery when she went to look for a lost earring that the stables was on fire. She shouted for help and started to get them out at the end of the episode. On Thursday 22nd the actors gathered at the studio, and Ysanne Churchman (Grace Archer) told Norman Painting (Phil Archer) that the script she had just been given said she was to die that night. She duly did.

Asking and Ebearhug - very interesting, thank you both. I had repressed memories of the flood. I did not know that they were worried about leaks in the famous episode in which Grace died or that Bruno Milna was Norman Painting. As an involuntary child listener to The Archers, I remember loving that name because it seemed so different.

The way he chose it is lovely too, if I can find it. It's in Forever Ambridge, which is written with year-by year reminiscence.

Got it. 1966.

"The Christian name Bruno commended itself to me in Venice; some years later I invented the surname Milna on a trip from France to Spain by bus."

He spent some holidays in Venice with a family he knew there, and "was taken to a swimming-pool run by a Venetian aquatic club and frequented mainly by local people. As I sat day-dreaming at the edge of the pool, a charming but rather over-ample girl swam towards me, and brushing the rat-tails of her dark gamine-styled hair out of her eyes mistook me for her boyfriend. 'Oh Bruno, Bruno!' she cried in a tone that was half pleading, half remonstrating. 'Bruno!' She was clearly short-sighted.'...
" 'What a pity I wasn't Bruno,' I thought. And then it occurred to me that one day I might be."

Milna seemed to him to go with it, so some time in the fifties he registered the name with the Writers' Guild as one of his pen-names.

And so it was ready and waiting in 1966 when he needed a name to write Archers scripts under. Ted Mason wanted something as soon as possible, so away he went.

He was surprised, later, by how few times it ever got Anglicised to Milner. And he did think of being "N.P. Kay" -- Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus, well-know soil-enhancing plant-foods...

What a super episode Neil was absolutely spit on, both with Brian (who is in utter denial) and Emmur.

*spot

Neil was fabulous. To be fair the acting for Brian and Emma was spot on for the characters.

Amazing by Neil tonight, his last remark made me well up. Top Archers writing and acting. All the Boop Points!