The Archers spoilers thread #9: Can't wait for 7.02pm? Join us here!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Spoilers thread for The Archers. All Archers listeners are welcome here, whether you post on our main Archers thread or not. There's just one rule: please keep all spoiler-related discussion in this thread and do not spill the beans on the main Archers thread.

We usually add the BBC teasers and cast lists for forthcoming episodes as they
become available, plus the Radio Times and Daily Mail previews when possible.
Feel free to add anything else you come across, e.g. cast news, scriptwriter
tweets!

But wouldn't it work wonderfully and simply via the voice?

Exactly. If they cast a male actor doing a ‘female’ voice, it would be abundantly clear. Most female voices in audiobooks narrated by men sound like Julian Clary with adenoids.

There is no Joy either, so I think "Rochelle" is going to go quiet.
But I'm beginning to think my theory that Rochelle is undercover/a spy is becoming the only plausible explanation if she exists as Joy describes here.

Whoops - hadn't realised the thread had moved on so far.

From geography, the Am should be the Stratford Avon, which joins the Severn at Tewkesbury (which is why Tewkesbury always features in flood stories). The Severn is tidal to just above Gloucester (Maisemore Bridge plops into my memory) but not as far as Tewkesbury. So I find myself doubting a) the ford, b) the counterflow.

At 85 miles, the Avon is a lot longer than the Am. It has about ten tributaries where the Am has two. I think it is simply a great deal larger as well as longer.

Also, the Am flows north east rather than south west.

Had not thought of that scenario. Surely that’d be too much force fitting a SL into TA? However… is Rochelle the ‘man’ who was at the address Mick went to?! And Joy is grieving her lost daughter but will eventually be reconciled with ‘Rocky’? If so, it’ll confirm that TA really has gone full on EE.

So the Am is totally fictitious then?

I imagine it must be; there isn't river that it matches, really. Ten miles long, with a tributary also about ten miles long, and having a weir, four bridges and two fords all within less than two miles of each other; deep enough to be navigable by a narrow-boat and with enough through-flow to flood a village to a height at a level with the upper part of the ground floor windows? It seems improbable.

Tut! Next you'll be telling us that the characters isn't real and the storylines are made up!

J. K. Rowling invented a Room of Requirement for Hogwarts. If a student needs something, the room will provide it. It strikes me that the Archers SWs were decades of her with this idea! The geography of Ambridge and Borsetshire conforms to whatever the SWs need for any given storyline, but this doesn't appear to be fixed for the future.

Also the height and layout of buildings. Nigel definitely fell from the Eiffel Tower

https://jrogel.com/more-or-less-nigels-free-fall/

He says More or Less calculated from the noise of the scream, which lasted 3.5 seconds, that Nigel fell 60m. This would make Lower Loxley the same height as the Library of Birmingham. We visited that recently. It's massive (largest public library in Europe). Ah well. It was a sop to poor Graham Seed, who was being written out. I still haven't forgiven them for that.

Me neither, I loved Nigel.

Sounded longer than that!!

I miss Nigel too. He made Lizzie more interesting

Me neither. I loved Nigel too.

<whispers>
I could never stand Nigel and his Tim-Nice-But-Dim persona.
He was introduced to TA while I was Abroad. When I first heard him I thought he was some sort of joke character and was astonished to learn that he was supposed to be taken seriously.

Sorry.

@BoreOfWhabylon When I first heard him I thought he was some sort of joke character and was astonished to learn that he was supposed to be taken seriously.

Was he really? I must have missed that memo too! 😄

I suspect the reason people liked Nigel was that he was singularly without malice. I don't think there was ever any indication of a single mean bone in his body. It was refreshing when taken against the ill-will and backbiting of too many others in the programme.

The same was true of another character most people liked, Marjorie Antrobus. Ditto ditto Hayley. They could all three be madly irritating sometimes, but they didn't mean harm, and that is a pleasing characteristic.

Yes Asking, but Nigel, unlike the others you mention, was spectacularly unintelligent. Lizzie treated him like some sort of pet.

Well, some people are unintelligent. Most of the populace of Ambridge, in fact.

I don’t think he was - he was just different in how he expressed it. Underestimated

I thought mick had only said that the address was the only one in Joy's address book - and everyone just assumed it must be Rochelle's? I think it's going to be linked to someone else involved in Joy's past.

And I was assuming that the sweary guy living there was just a subsequent inhabitant.

I think he meant it was the only one for Rochelle