🧦 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 slightly wonder why anyone, male, female or ten-foot-tall faster-than-light-travelling spider, would want to have any sort of relationship with joy-sucker Shula, honestly....

Officially, that means Ruairi is trans, doesn't it? The trans umbrella has subsumed L, G, and B as well as what seems like several hundred minor variations on sexuality.

Anybody else listening? I'm enjoying it. The regular cast are good at accents when given a chance. I didn't recognise Ian Pepperell (Roy) as John the Baptist.

Enjoy isn't the word for this bit, though. Odd to be hearing the Crucifixion story other than at Easter. I'm an atheist but this is a human story. What a vile species we are in some ways.

Yes, last week’s production worked better from a seasonal perspective. This does feel odd.

Beautiful singing to end there.

It was lovely. I’m always envious of other people’s ability to sing in tune.

Tonight was rather good, though I couldn’t help being slightly fearful of a motorway pile-up wiping out extraneous non-speaking Tuckers (not Abby), thus giving Mike an unarguable reason not to return to Birmingham.

Poor Chris. (!) They are being very attentive to the continuing torture, for him, of having Alice there, but disengaged from their relationship. Still, Amy’s waiting in the wings …

Still catching up with salsa night - that was rather lovely! So nice to hear women having fun for a chance

I couldn’t help being slightly fearful of a motorway pile-up wiping out extraneous non-speaking Tuckers (not Abby), thus giving Mike an unarguable reason not to return to Birmingham Brilliantly put - there does seem to be a determination to bring back Moike without a peep from Vickoi and Bethany.

Mike seems to be lining up to fill the empty free-loading shoes left by ghastly Joe Grundy. Is that intentional?

My heart sank as he snaffled the last sausage roll and baited Susan in a bid to show how astute he thinks he is. Hopefully you’ll be able to reassure me that there is more to him and he is not being reintroduced in order to act simply as Eddie’s foil and boost the numbers of older, single, dull men in the village whose sole purpose is to bore the listeners now Bert and Joe have moved on.

Totally agree with @LillianGish’s analysis of what is currently wrong with the show, btw.

Mike isn't (or at least never was) a freeloader. He was always a very hard worker, even with his one eye. (Which I would have thought would hamper his darts play). He is doing up the bungalow for Ruth for nothing bar cake & beer.

Oh thanks @TeenPlusCat, that’s a huge relief. Let’s hope he hasn’t had a PT recently. I have to say doing up the bungalow for free doesn’t quite ring true but we have already discussed that up-thread I think.

@Roysnewshirt

Oh thanks *@TeenPlusCat*, that’s a huge relief. Let’s hope he hasn’t had a PT recently. I have to say doing up the bungalow for free doesn’t quite ring true but we have already discussed that up-thread I think.

Doing up a bungalow that was completely refurbished inside and out six years ago seems a bit overdone, really. As for the guff about putting in a splashback in the kitchen, or whatever it was: when that kitchen was rebuilt in 2015 after the flood it was done for My Freda, does anyone think Bert would have allowed something second-rate for his beloved wife? The fact that she died before she ever saw it doesn't matter: the kitchen would have been as near to perfect as he could get it.

Reasonable enough that it needs redecorating, though. It's been a few years, and it would have been done to Bert's taste before, which might have been a little old-fashioned for Pip or Josh, or whichever younger person ends up there.

I am 100% convinced that the SWs forgot about Mike having lost an eye within days. It's never been mentioned since.

Two bits of trivia our newer listeners may never have had me inflict on them before not know:

Terry Molly (Mike) also played Davros on Doctor Who many years ago, and he's father in real life to Philip Molloy, who is Will Grundy.

I am unsure whether that was the first bit of father/son Archers casting: was it before or after Keri Davies' son was employed to play the child-Daniel and Keri got so cross about the character being called Fat Dan on the BBC message-board? (The fatness was an on-air fact; he was taking steroids for his juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and they made him fat, so Shula put him on a diet which he spent a lot of time trying to get round.)

ps I do not redecorate every five years. Waste of time, effort, paint...

And if whichever Archer child moving in doesn't like the perfectly good decorations, they know what to do: go to a shop and but some paint and a couple of brushes...

We don't either, but I used to know a woman whose husband had a rolling programme of redecoration which meant every single room was redecorated every two years. My parents get a painter in every few years.

The Molloys predate young Dan, I would think, but haven't checked.

I got interested enough to check; William Grundy has been voiced by Philip Molloy since 1988, when William was five years old.

My thought was that if William's actor had been changed between childhood and being old enough for a regular part, as has happened with most of the juveniles, that might have happened after Daniel was voiced by Dominic Davies, but that clearly wasn't so: Daniel wasn't born until 1994 and didn't speak until a few years later. He doesn't appear in the BBC Genome cast lists until April 2002, and then he is Dominic Davies.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

ps I do not redecorate every five years. Waste of time, effort, paint...

Agreed. We’re still revelling in our beautiful new kitchen. This talk about kitchen renovations made me do some sums - our New Kitchen is 15 years old.

… and our neighbours have completely redecorated their kitchen three times in that time.

My mum lived for a while in a small cul-de-sac in Hull, back when it was a prosperous town, and had seven neighbours. At any given time there was always the remains of a kitchen in a skip outside at least one of them, because they all seemed to have run out of other things on which to spend the money they got from making caravans. The skips were a nuisance because it wasn't a very wide road and there were no garages for everyone's cars.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I slightly wonder why anyone, male, female or ten-foot-tall faster-than-light-travelling spider, would want to have any sort of relationship with joy-sucker Shula, honestly....

Officially, that means Ruairi is trans, doesn't it? The trans umbrella has subsumed L, G, and B as well as what seems like several hundred minor variations on sexuality.

I've always had a lot of respect for you @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime, but I do wonder if you and I are listening to the same The Archers.

Shula is good, kind and decent (apart from the affair with Dr Locke, and having seen him in Silent Witness, I can see the attraction).

If Shula and Stella have an affair, I might lose the will to live.

FWIW, I am a woman, was born with female chromosones, am heterosexual and have nothing against gays or lesbians. I don't like personality changes on TA

Shula used to be a good, kind and decent person, after having been an irritating tearaway in her teens and early twenties, until recently when she became a self-deceiving, lying nuisance with delusions of sanctity.

Eh? Two Supper Tucker?

Nah …

What’s going on?

Have been binge catching up the pre Christmas til now episodes

I think Mike & Vicki have split (amicably ) and he will stay in Ambridge - otherwise cannot fathom the daft storyline of him doing up the recently decorated bungalow (anything less than 10 years is recent for decoration IMHO)