🧦 Archers thread #133: Woolley socks it to them! Discuss The Archers and its Woolley thinking and plotting here.

[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 would love to take part in the Mysteries, 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 @ButtonSister and @BorsetshireBanality for title suggestions. I went with their idea in the interests of keeping the title fairly short.

@LillianGish and @FoxgloveSummers made cracking but longer suggestions, which (mashed up) will do a great job of kicking off our new thread.

Evictions (Tom and Tash), depictions (Bridge Farm Christmas card), conniptions (entire cast and crew of the Mysteries), convictions (Philip) and addictions (Alice) - what are our predictions for 2022 in Ambridge? All sure to make this the Best Ambridge Christmas Evah!

This thread should take us through to early January unless something very exciting happens (ha ha, fat chance). My predictions: this is a bit left field, but I wonder if Peggy will offer to buy the shop and flat so Tom and Gnasher (great coinage, whose was it?) can stay put. I don't believe Hazel is sincere about wanting to live in/regularly visit Ambridge. She's always been utterly two-faced and rotten to the core, why would she change now?

The Mysteries will, of course be a triumph and briefly borrowing the🔮 (sorry, Bore!) I expect we are going to hear them at some point over the New Year period.

Over to you!

I'm less bothered about Usha, who always seems to sound slightly drunk to my ears

That's so right !

I’ve just caught up after Christmas and realise I have so many problems with The Archers at the moment. I have no interest whatsoever in the Mysteries - I could just about credit a cobbled together panto in the village hall, but Lynda’s production no longer have any credibility to me anymore for such a small village. The lack of follow-up on the sale of Home Farm (a potentially interesting thread of the plot) means I can never imagine Jenny out of the Home Farm kitchen - how did she fit everyone in their tiny semi for one Christmas let alone two with an extra guests with breakaway Cluedo parties and anyone being able to have any kind of conversation without being overheard ? Also, as someone who made it to the U.K. for Christmas and then back again I can confirm most of the conversation both before, after and during was about testing, quarantine, form filling and changing regulations so Ruairi just rocking up and being collected from the station makes me believe his ski holiday was a figment of his imagination. Actually I feel the same about his degree. Do we know what he is actually studying? I don’t think it was mentioned. I also have a son who has just finished his first term at uni - I seriously wonder if Ruairi is even there. Is it just a cover for whatever he is doing to make money for his extravagant gifts? Mike’s return makes no sense to me - why is he working for free to do up the bungalow? Is his marriage to Vickoi in trouble and will he end up living there? I’m also slightly disappointed that we missed the Bridge Farm Christmas Eve Christmas tree decorating and no mention whatsoever of Tom and Natasha’s invasion.

Apologies for massive moan - needed to get that off my chest before 2022 (just off for yet another test so I can stop quarantining for the New Year) 🥂 Happy New Year to one and all.

You're absolutely right Lillian. The plot lines are weird at the moment.

I'm willing to suspend disbelief on Covid restrictions as who knows what's likely to be in place in reality but the other inconsistencies are so implausible.

I assume Usha acted for the other party in a divorce involving Stella?

I also thought the lack of Tom and Natasha has been weird. No Natasha flying off the handle when she realised Tom had moved all their stuff. No Christmas Eve/John’s birthday (problem with a lack of Fridays in Ambridge…), no getting used to sharing a kitchen with Pat’n’Tony. Very strange after all the build up.

And while musing on all that I realised o don’t know what’s happened to Hazel. Is she still at the Lodge? Are we supposed to believe she’s gone back to wherever she came from? So weird. It’s like whoever wrote this last two weeks hadn’t even listened to the month before, let alone been in editorial meetings about continuity.

I do want to propose a BOOP for Kirsty’s card from Bleak, though. I quite like Kirsty when the SWs aren’t making her crazy, and this felt like a nice end to the story for her. Hope she has a better 2022

Do we know where Stella is living? Might she be a candidate for the empty cottage?

I was assuming some sort of lesbian storyline was approaching for Ruth and Stella.

@hopeishere

I was assuming some sort of lesbian storyline was approaching for Ruth and Stella.

Oh I hope not. Can't Ruth just have a female-farming friend?

Are married women in their fifties not allowed to have female friends without being lesbians, these days?

Maybe Stella used to be Stephen

Not sure how that would make a relationship with Ruth lesbian?

That woman who has taken over from Nancy Banks Smith in the Guardian thinks they're heading down the lesbian route ...

Oh I do hope not. It's Lynda not Linda btw The Guardian

WhoppingBigBackside, may I offer you balm to your soul (sort of)?

ambridgereporter.org.uk/Spellings_of_Proper_Names.html

@Tulipomania

That woman who has taken over from Nancy Banks Smith in the Guardian thinks they're heading down the lesbian route ...

But Mia already decided Stella was not a lesbian when she was trying to play matchmaker for Will and since Mia Knows Everything, Stella must be heterosexual.

I’m sticking with my theory that this is going to turn into an obsessive friend and eventual stalker storyline.

Thanks Asking

Happy New Year everyone!

@LiterallyKnowsBest

I’m not overly concerned with pandemic travel inaccuracies - it must be a nightmare when you’re writing and recording ahead of time.

But the scriptwriters (KD this week) are all too often guilty of carelessly implying intrigue where no such story actually exists. So it’s hard to know if one should be anticipating exciting revelations - or whether it’s wisest just to shrug and move on. In this instance I’m inclined to the former - simply because it has such potential!

Eventually, sometime next year, Ben will receive a desperate phone call from Ruairi, hiding out in a cave somewhere, relentlessly chased by international gangsters … While Ben wonders which of his siblings to ask for advice, Beth will throw their passports and the dog into a truck, and hurtle them across Europe on a daring rescue mission. Bess, in the nick of time, will fling herself, teeth bared, upon the worst aggressor with the biggest gun, as BnB drag Ruairi to safety and a pint of Shires and another round of ‘Love you, bro.’

🤮

Very much looking forward to this even as I puzzle again over the Ben/th/ss setup

@Tulipomania

That woman who has taken over from Nancy Banks Smith in the Guardian thinks they're heading down the lesbian route ...

She’s been reading my plucked from nowhere speculations of a few months ago then

This particular idea has been raising its head as a speculation in social media since oh, 2009 to my certain knowledge, and certainly ever since Vanessa Whitburn (who had stated that while she was editor there would be no lesbian regular characters, back when she introduced The Only Gays In The Village and very ill-matched and unreal as a couple Adam and Ian are to be sure) retired. It's been suggested about Ruth, about Helen, about Emma, about every unattached female character who has appeared such as Hannah.... Personally I feel that when a woman is as preoccupied with having sex with males and them worshipping her as Emma always has been, she is unlikely to turn out to have Sapphic yearnings, but hey.

Funnily, if male characters like Toby or Rex or Roy show interest only in sex with females for years and decades, they are never put down as being certain to turn to men for sex if the women are not interested in them.

It's sort of the opposite of that old nonsense about all a lesbian needs is "a good seeing to" and she will become het.

You can’t turn on the TV these days without encountering snogging lesbians. They are everywhere. Things have significantly moved on since the days of Beth and Margaret.

To be honest the number of women in their 50s and up I know who have had a lesbian dalliance/serious relationship post divorce or widowhood is fairly massive. (One or two men who have left their wives late in life for men as well.)

Here's hoping that the Archers deliver 6 decent episodes a week in 2022. It is a big ask, but I think we deserve it after months of bloomin Mystery Plays.

I suspect the editors reckon that they have ticked off "gender" with Ruari (though I can't for the life of me remember whether he came out as bi-sexual or non-binary).

@FoxgloveSummers

To be honest the number of women in their 50s and up I know who have had a lesbian dalliance/serious relationship post divorce or widowhood is fairly massive. (One or two men who have left their wives late in life for men as well.)

Ruth is neither divorced nor widowed, and I somehow don't see David in the Alan Moore rôle.

Oh! I didn’t mean Ruth, I’ve been touting someone like Shula. Ruth’s ok as she is (although not averse to an affair as we know).

Ruairi came out as bisexual so nothing to do with gender.