Never listened to The Archers - where/how to start

[Boilingicicle]

I would like to start listening to TA but would it possible to make sense of whats going on? Are there any introductions or guides anyone can recommend? If I started listening with no background knowledge would i just ‘get the hang’ of the who, the why, the what etc? Any advice welcome. I need something entertaining I can follow as there’s less and less on TV/Netflix etc that I like.

There are Archers, Aldridges, Pargetters, Hebden(-Lloyds), Lloyds, Grundys, Carters, Horrobins (mainly silent),
Burns, Tuckers, Fairbrothers, Snells, Sterling , Perks (or there were, but they have seemed to vanish)

I miss Natasha. Attractive voice and she has some life in her. Heavens knows why she married deadwood Tom.

And I love Russ which puts me in a very exclusive group.

OP - Russ is the perv who's shacked up in his girlfriend's (Lily) dead dad's stately home. Him being a perv on account of him grooming her when she was a Sixth Form student and blackmailing her drug dealing brother (Freddie) who ended up in prison but is now working as a kitchen assistant despite being heir to a stately pile.

It's like a rural East Enders.

It's not as depressing as EE, and I think fewer in Ambridge have criminal convictions than in Walford. There are certainly fewer murders (except of badgers.)

Oh lord ,a once addict here, but Alice's misery memoirs have chased me away. I sort of miss it but on trying to listen again was so incensed by the ridiculousness (NOT comedy, but the scriptwriters must have thought it was) of Lilian going to Jersey to buy a yacht or horse !!! fgs, not to mention the vet who doesn't seem to know that a dog needs exercise. I've given up again.