🏏Archers thread #136: Howzat! Oliver’s bowled a googly, Kathy’s out, Grey Gables left with nightwatchman. Tracy knocked for six. Is Ambridge on a sticky wicket? Discuss The Archers 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 are entranced by new character Adil, 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.)

Apologies if anybody made a thread title suggestion and I missed it. I decided to mark the start of the cricket season in the hope that things will take a turn for the better for poor Tracy.

It feels like months since the last new thread, which was just after Phoebe departed for Scotland. Has she been mentioned since? I can't recall. Not greatly missed, by me, at any rate. Her fish gifts didn't last long.

I can't shake off the feeling that The Archers is going through a long dull patch. I don't feel greatly engaged by anything that's happening at the moment other than Tracy's plight. Such a good actor, which helps, of course.

What's keeping you listening? Habit? Genuinely enjoying it? Over to you!

(PS In the process of starting this thread, I've discovered that our custom-made Archers emoji has gone. You used to get it by typing . Not any more.)

I don’t understand why we needed the long explanation of a baby’s development from the sonographer. I understand the sometimes stilted and long winded farming explanations just because of the programme’s roots and that it’s a little bit niche, but we all know about babies. It’s boring. Also - all my sonographers we’re pretty much monosyllabic which I assume is because they’re concentrating and also barely surviving the NHS.

There’s no big, interesting storyline at the moment. I mean, the divorce (yawn) but that seems to just be the endless continuation of the Alice alcoholism story which is also heavy on the baby front (YAWN). Was the last really big storyline the Rob one? We had the slavery but that went out with a whimper in the end.

I don’t understand why we needed the long explanation of a baby’s development from the sonographer

Yes, I was thinking that myself. Surely the demographics of the Archers' listeners must mean that all of that was well known to the vast majority.

But only if he stops dropping in on The Dopeys. I listen on catch up and fast forward all Dopey material. I've barely listened to anything recently.

Whoever said the other day that Ruth is a lot nicer to Steph than to her actual children is right. Thought it was bold of her to be defending cheating on your husband to her husband and child today! I presume Ben doesn’t know anything about … Sam was it?

Don't worry I don't think she really cares about Steph, she just had to take the other side. Yawn.

Agree most listeners will know the sonography chat already, and if they don't they won't want to hear it.

I suspect they're really hammering home that Natasha is fine and well and experiencing normal twin pregnancy symptoms, whisky Tom gets increasingly and understandably troubled.

I wonder if we’re in for a male post partum depression storyline. Not that it’s not a real problem, but I hope not.

I don't really understand what male postpartum depression is. Is it depression because of the big change a baby makes to the father's life?

I quite liked the sonography chat. I couldn't really remember how pregnant Natasha was and all that detail about the weight of the babies and how fast they'd be putting on weight helped me picture how pregnant she must look, how debilitating it must be (and very glad I'd never had twins!). I'm not interested in "big stories" as such. For me, the "big story" is life in Ambridge - that's why I'm not particularly interested in caricatures like Steph or Joy. Tom and Natasha's twins will be a new generation Archers - so that's a pretty big story in itself.

I wonder if we’re in for a male post partum depression storyline

Oh God- a depressed Tom?!? That would make for unbearably tedious listening- surely they won’t inflict that on us!

Given they only have 13 minutes the sonography chat was a pointless waste of time.

Steph is awful but I don't think Joy is a caricature. The reason for her being there was unclear but the village will have new incomers. Once she settled in Joy was perfectly believable as a rather anxious, lonely but basically kind woman in late middle age. She's far less of a caricature than Kate or Fagash Lil or the newly invented cartoon Chelsea.

Isn't a depressed Tom basically just Tony?

I liked the sonography chat. I've got tonnes of friends with kids and am actually pregnant myself but I haven't had the experience of having a late scan with twins - surely most haven't.

I think calling it a waste of time when we often have detail of e.g. doctors and solicitors' appointments, financial advisers etc etc maybe indicates that people don't want to hear "women's stuff" on the radio or don't think it's worth the time? Or maybe for MNers it's on average just more recent/immediate and people feel "everyone knows".

I think the conversations with professionals are usually a waste of time as well. I would prefer to hear the regular characters talking about what was said, and hear their reactions, rather than a public service broadcast from a random friend of the producer actor.

When we had Alice's solicitor reading out a public service leaflet on divorce it was painfully dull and improbable. At least the actor playing the sonographer was a better actor, but she didn't tell us anything that couldn't have been summarised in, say, 10 seconds' conversation with Pat'n'Tone.

I was just thinking that what we're going to get is not so much depressed Tom but Tired Tom, i.e. Alistair mark 2.

It was delivered like a public service announcement. It's nothing to do with it being "women's stuff" . It simply added nothing to the story- all that was needed was "it's fine, all normal and well"

So far as other advisors, it was the equivalent of being talked through the procedure of, oh I didn't know, what to expect when buying a house, leasing a house, getting a bank loan. None of which are of any interest, except when things go wrong.

The thing was, the ultrasonographer was saying things that a midwife would say. You don’t get that sort of chat in a scan.

I was just thinking that what we're going to get is not so much depressed Tom but Tired Tom, i.e. Alistair mark 2.
Did you mean Adam mark 2?

I don't want to hear about people's sex lives on TA.

Yes this. I was almost expecting her to finish off with ‘your house maybe be at risk if you do not keep up with payments’ at the end. Nothing to do with ‘women’s stuff’ just an odd use of precious time.

It was a sign that Something Will Go Wrong. Not necessarily with Pinky and Perky

Exactly. In any soap or drama the words 'everything is going really well' denote imminent disaster.

Not necessarily with Pinky and Perky

Oh. Natasha dies in childbirth. Kirsty comforts Tom. They become a couple again. She becomes mother to the twins and matriarch of Bridge Farm?

Is this what SOC meant when he said those two would (essentially) have to walk through fire to prove themselves worthy inheritors of Bridge Farm?

I would need a lot of persuading to believe this s/l would work.

If I were Kirsty I would learn to be a blacksmith and forge myself a pair of iron knickers sooner than let Tom anywhere near my vagina ever, ever again. She'd have to be clinically insane surely to go along with that storyline. Maybe Helen would stab Tom for her rather than let it happen.

I love Kirsty and I like the Natasha actress, so don't wish to see either of them go

I can't see what either of them would see in Cardboard Tom, although to be fair Kirsty was going to marry The Real Tom Archer, who was lovely

Maybe Peggy will retire, maybe Tony or Pat will be unwell. I don't want anything to happen to any of the actors. Peggy is wonderful and gets great lines.

Cardboard Tom is as dull as ditchwater. He'll probably pass out before Pinky & Perky arrive.

I saw a yellow car the other day.

Just remembered what pissed me off last night. Ben who must be all of 20 saying "And how!" in response to his dad asking whether Steph was still staying I think.

I think there's been a thing before about Ben having quite old lady turns of phrase perhaps because he spends so much time with his real mother Jill. But come on, I'm twice his age and have never seen "And how!" outside of some of my grannies old books from the 1930s, let alone said it.

Or maybe I'm out of touch and the kids are now "And how!"-ing at each other like there's no tomorrow.

Maybe it's the daily minutiae, rather than the plots that actually show up the younger generation as being written by people at least 10 years older? I doubt they would have talked about " our love life" either. Wasn't Beth a bit of an outrageous wild child, out of Ben's league originally? Now she's grumbly and dull and slightly controlling. Hannah and Natasha likewise were annoying but not steretypical villains. I'd like some of that nuanced but occasionally irritating character people have in real life. Has Natasha totally overcome her tendencies to credit card spending ? Didn't she have a father who died on the streets and had a personality disorder? Wouldn't having a baby stir some of these up again? It would be more interesting than the sonographer acting like a midwife and educating the witless duo who would surely have read up on twin pregnancies, or been on mumsnet, and know why Natasha was likely to be breathless.