Archers thread #160: Ram a lamb a ding dong! To rate the mass wisteria in Ambridge, tap the feedback tablet 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd have given a home to Hilda the Hellcat, or other unusual views.

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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 @MerryChristmasToYou, @OverArmour and @LillianGish for the thread title ideas.

This week is a bit better than last week, but the Brad/Adil/Lily stuff is very odd. Coming up to the anniversary of Jennifer's death (22nd January last year). We need a new matriarch - could that be Natasha? I find her quite an interesting character. Sometimes she's awful and then she has moments as last night where she utterly redeems herself.

Over to you!

it's a very dark thought but child abusers target single mothers and will also get their friends and family on board

Ah. That will solve the problem of “why are they doing another coercive control storyline. I think you’ve probably got it. Why do we need that?

I guess we have lined up somewhere a geeky teenager turned murderer. And we haven’t had the trans story yet. Makes your heart sink, doesn’t it?

When Harry first appeared I mooted the idea of a csa so but it’s just too dark imo

alice can see he’s not quite right in the way he speaks to Chris. Has he met Martha yet?

I thought that Martha was very quiet given her mother had just unexpectedly walked in

Hope it's ok to join in. Long time Archers listener and lurked here for ages.
Just listened to latest episode and there have been some stinkers, but Harry's interaction with CHRIS, don't forget his name CHRIS, was one of the worst I've heard. I'm imagining the actor with a book in his hand reading into the microphone. Admittedly the script wasn't brilliant but even so. Has he ever been on radio before? Does anyone use people's names to that extent?
Anyway I'll pipe down now....

Normally repeating a name over and over is a way to help you remember the name. Can’t see why he is doing it unless it makes him think he seems dominant? His acting was made worse because Chris’ bemused acting was spot on!

welcome! Thread is more fun than listening tbh!!

Grimchmas
Nobody else notice that Jolene time travels? She could surely sort all her problems out by nipping back to the year she met the ruffian!?

Heh! I did notice the typo, but not until this morning when it was far too late to do anything about it.

My Archers consumption has become madly meta - I used to just read the summaries, but now I consume it entirely through this board. It adds an exciting puzzle-element, so many thanks for all the reportage and comment

Yes, just fed up with the weirdness of TA at the moment. Harry’s delivery is bizarre but the content of his farrier chat was equally peculiar, please will they get someone with at least a passing knowledge of horses to advise.

So if we are going with Harry being an addict angle

chris wary because having lived with an addict he is recognising it?

Harry's speech is SO weird and unnatural there just has to be a reason for it. Even Alice and Chris seem to have noticed.

I thought it was suspicious that Harry just happened to have a close friend who died of alcoholism. I mean whilst many people will know alcoholics, knowing someone who actually died because of it is pretty rare. I think he may have even said it was his best mate? It’s an easy lie to use to reel in Alice.

And it’s not as though he hasn’t met CHRIS before. You’d imagine from that bizarre little episode that it was his first encounter with CHRIS.
🤔

Also wildly inappropriate to assume that he will be meeting Martha's PGP - why would they want to meet him at this stage? He's only been on the scene 5 minutes! Bearing in mind Martha hasn't met him yet, why didn't Alice divert elsewhere as soon as she realised Martha was there?

All very odd...

All very odd means all very much in keeping with the current collection of weirdnesses, I feel. None of it suspends my disbelief at all.

Gosh, yes, those conversations between Chris and Harry were incredibly strange. Awful scripts anyway, but Oliver might have carried off the first without sounding like some weird psycho. Just completely wrong in terms of age and delivery for Harry.

Why are they getting this so wrong? They have one job - making convincing radio …

The trouble is they also have to contend with plot-holes you could drive a tank through.

For example: Rafe Sedgemoor's horse, we hear, has cast a shoe. Chris is by the road firing up his forge to replace it. (To be honest I am not sure why he'd need the forge if he is just replacing a cast shoe that is still with the horse but no longer attached to its hoof, but let's be charitable and say the shoe vanished into the mud and can't be found so he has to fit a new one.) Harry and Alice stop and have a talk with him. What is wrong with this word-picture?

Well, since they have to be told whose horse it is that cast the shoe, that horse is not there waiting with its rider for the repair to be done. You would think the horse and its rider would be present in these circumstances: it must be hard to fit a shoe to a horse that isn't there. And if they were present, Harry knows Rafe and would not need to ask whose horse needed its shoe replacing.

I was feeling fairly certain yesterday that Harry is played by the same chap that plays Velpy in silent witness. Or they went to the same (terrible) acting school. The conversation with Chris was awful. I can understand a bit of stating the obvious as an explanation to the uninitiated but that was painful and seemingly pointless. I was surprised Chris could muster a response.

I'm a bit behind (two episodes to catch up on) but I can't understand why Jolene didn't, when clocking The Dodgy Brummies, say to Kenton, "That one's trouble, keep away from 'im and make sure Tracy and Emma keep their distance an' all".

Shouldbehoovering
I was feeling fairly certain yesterday that Harry is played by the same chap that plays Velpy in silent witness. Or they went to the same (terrible) acting school.

Alastair Michael is the character in Silent Witness, I think; Harry is played by Jack Ashton. It's impossible to say if the went to the same acting school, because Alistair Michael is surprisingly secretive for an actor and websearches don't bring up a whole lot about him. Jack Ashton was at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London.

Im slow on the uptake but apparently Jack Ashton recently split from Helen George so that might explain his crap acting at the moment - sorry Jack, but someone has to tell you.

Just looked him up and he doesn’t look like Harry. I was expecting blond

She's awful. He can do better. (Sorry, not sorry).

I'm still holding on to it being part of the plot i.e opioid addiction.

On Chris being unwilling to say where he lives, I thought it was maybe embarrassment about living in a flat over a shop rather than having already clocked that he doesn't want Harry to be able to trace him. Harry was being so very condescending and the class differences emphasised that Chris may have felt self-conscious about it.

Harry massively fell from grace with me anyway by calling Chris 'mate'. Its a habit my ex-h had (possibly still has, I wouldn't know) of subconsciously class marking. He would never do it with other professionals, but as soon as a tradesman came to the house he was calling him 'mate' every third sentence or so. I called him out on it after a cricket match where he had very noticeably (to me) gone with 'mate' for the WC players and not for the university student players. I could be over-projecting this onto Harry, mind, but that's what it sounded like to me.

Right, I've caught up and...WTF?

The Dodgy Man Who Has Followed Jolene For 30 Years storyline is weird enough but...Harry Either a SW is trying to show how much they know about horses or Harry is bizarrely patronising and comes across as a complete arse to Chris. Either way it's really quite jarring.

Thanks for the link @TottersBlanklyIntoBimboCore . I watched the Joy one in full. She's great.
I'll watch the Tracy one too.