Archers thread #162: ‘This is like talking to Lassie’ – how right you are, Fallon! 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, 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 think cowhide-covered walls are a great idea for a cafe with vegan and vegetarian customers, 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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.)

Title comes from one of the better scripted conversations of recent weeks, when Fallon said ”Harrison, this is like talking to Lassie! Just TELL ME”. So true of so many conversations on TA where you just want to shake them and yell 'Just TELL US, and quickly, so you don't get interrupted before you can say the important bit', but of course they rarely do and days pass before the conversation resumes. @TheBell suggested putting it in the title, so thanks for that.

@OverArmour had a great if more obscure idea, paying tribute to a Peter Greenaway film: The Policeman, The Drunk, The Vet and his Lover. That will do very well as a starting point for the new thread. Will Alistair leave? Will Denise tell John she's leaving him? Will Paul learn to be less noisy? Do any of us care?

I do care a little about Harrison and Fallon. I want Harrison to get a grip and realise he needs a paying job more than the captaincy of the cricket team. I don't care at all about Harry but I think he's been brought in purely as a plot device so with any luck we can all forget about him very soon.

Over to you!

So maybe they are being a proxy for Romanians rather than Romani, or the Somali gangs, or Bengali machete crews, or the Turkish Cypriot mob, or ....

Or maybe the obvious one, when it comes to rural England.

So let me get this straight. You are assigning nationalities to various gangs, and that's not racist?!

Yes, in the real world, that is how it is. And I see the "Wolverhampton" storyline as a proxy for travellers. Unknown people show up at night-time, have at least one dangerous dog, the pub landlord gets attacked...

Oh, you think rural crime can all be attributed to travellers? Gosh, who knew. I think that's rather a nineteenth century outlook myself.

And no, I am not assigning nationalities to the gangs; the members of the gangs are the ones who do that. Mostly by not letting in people who are not of their nationality. The police know this.

Sigh. No. I was talking about a particular storyline that seemed blindingly obvious to me to be a proxy for travellers. And I clearly wasn't the only one who thought that.

This is not the gotcha you think it is.

Effectively Jolene is saying she would rather throw Fallon under the bus than take the obvious step of reporting the threats to the police. Ridiculous.

Hmm is Jolene being blackmailed?

@TherapistInATabard my thoughts exactly

I thought they were travellers too tbh.

Am I the only one who can only hear ‘Wolverhampton’ said in Jolene’s dulcet pirate tones these days?

I will also admit to perhaps thinking Travellers too, initially. Purely because of the arriving in the pub car park late at night with a trailer. The pubs near me have barriers across the car parks that are pulled over at night to prevent this.

It seemed a very questionable choice by the scriptwriters to have written the storyline - for the reasons above - but then they took another questionable path instead. The whole storyline is strange!

Edited to add, I don’t think it would’ve been appropriate for the scriptwriters to have written about minorities in this way. But as I’ve put above, that’s some of the reason why the storyline in itself seems questionable.

Oh, you think rural crime can all be attributed to travellers? Gosh, who knew. I think that's rather a nineteenth century outlook myself

You've got a romantic view of travellers, Asking, if you don't acknowledge the havoc they can wreak when they arrive in a rural community.

But there was the story about Markie and the gig in Wolverhampton. Very unlikely but nothing to do with travellers.

I jumped to people organising dog fights (who may or may not be travellers) rather than travellers per se. And it wasn't that anyway.

Yes. that's my point. They're a proxy for travellers.

And they had to come up with a reason for them to be in a pub car park at night with a vicious dog that didn't involve them being travellers, so they came up with the ridiculous Wolverhampton angle.

As PPs have said, you don't seem to know much about rural England. I live near a place that has a famous annual horse fair, which causes absolute havoc for days. All the business have to shut down and board up, all the pubs have to shut for days, etc etc. All because of those lovely, peaceful travellers.

Village car parks around here aren't safe either, gangs travel in vans with fake plates to do break ins. Ditto sheds and pubs.

I'm not sure Brian could face being in Home Farm without Jenny

Brian is a survivor and certainly not over-sentimental (re how he gave J’s clothes away in the immediate aftermath of her death). I think he would be just fine and have no problem at all settling back in to HF with Miranda - with just a few comments about how it’s a waste that the new kitchen was replaced unnecessarily.

I'm still not buying it.

I don't think there's been any suggestion that these people are travellers. Actually travellers would be more believable (if perhaps a bit of a lazy stereotype). They are instead a group who apparently attended a gig in Wolverhampton some years ago whom Jolene still recognises after looking at one of them the wrong way and who still recognised her. Why they would have it in for her after all these years (apart from for crimes against Country and Western Music) is anyone's guess. Ditto for why they would have tracked her down to Ambridge when she hasn't performed a gig for ages (though presumably is about to be encouraged to play one after Kenton's comments last night). I can see that Jolene now has a problem in that she hasn't mentioned to Kenton that she knows who the dog attackers are - much less reported them to the police. It's still a mystery to me what hold these men have over Jolene which prevented her from making the report in the first place or warning him not to go into the car park. A dogs dinner of plotting (as I think I said before - and not with reference to Kenton).

I think being in home farm would tear Brian up. Back in the place Jenny loved and he lost

Back in the place Jenny loved and he lost

Back in the place that Jenny insisted he sell for plot reasons to stop Kate whining about the impact on her yurt empire.

I didn't say they were travellers. I said they are proxies for travellers. A way to have a traveller-type storyline without everyone going "That's wacist! All travellers are totally lovely!"

Because this storyline makes no sense otherwise.

Isn't their hold over Jolene that they're threatening her and the family?