Archers thread #175: Crime, punishment and kittens. 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 your current highlight is the kitten naming, 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 https://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.)

As I am posting this on Sunday morning at a point where some omnibus listeners won't have caught up with this week's events, I've kept the title less spoilerish than I might have done. Below this point, everything broadcast to date is of course fair game, so be warned!

Of course the main interest for most us at the moment is indeed the kitten naming competition. Isn't it? No?

Oh well, since you insist ...

How do we think George is going to cope now? Whither the Grundy and Horrobin clan? Will Lilian choke on her G&T (please)? Will Kenton get septicaemia from a kitten scratch? Will Alice die of sanctimoniousness? Will Fallon spend the rest of her life with the appalling Harrison and his unfulfulled longing for a behbeh? Will Adam and Will come to blows in the Bridge Farm packing shed?

Over to you!

Signing in to new thread. I rarely comment as I’m always way behind with my listening but enjoy all your insights.

Lilian is plump and wears clothes two sizes too small.

@YourOpenAmberDog Rob Rinder agrees with you. In the podcast he said that there was no evidence that George was guilty of dangerous driving.

67

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/x43n0BCK3bTrmx0b38x1wX/neil-carter

There’s a wide variety of views on Alice on this thread tbh

I have empathy for Alice, but I think she's being quite hypocritical in relation to George. She drove her car to the middle of nowhere to get drunk in it. The whole situation wouldn't have happened if she hadn't done that. If I were her I would feel ashamed of myself for that.

I always imagine Lillian looking a bit like Sheila Hancock, and permanently attached to a cigarette and a G&T.

But swapping her into the drivers seat was awful!

I wondered if Neil might have developed diabetes, not sure why. They’ve done heart and cancer stories recently.

Not that we know of, and she has shown no signs of any definite symptoms. Some posters are convinced that she must have it just because of Alice's drinking (and the need for drama). I have posted before about it being statistically unlikely, and linked several studies to show the rates of FAS in people with heavy & binge-drinking mothers. I really can't be bothered to repeat it all, but the bottom line is that there's no more than a one in three chance of FAS, as an upper limit if we assume that Alice's heavy binge drinking continued all through the pregnancy (which, IIRC, we have very little reason to think it did).

Welcome to the thread!

I like Alice (mostly) and I too feel empathy with the character over what George did and the way addiction makes people behave.

YES @SabrinaThwaite - this is spot on re Lilian!!

That's not at all how I imagined him.

That is an old picture of an actor called Brain Hewlett, who was born in1939 and is therefore 85, not 67.

It says Neil was born 1957 so the actor is much older then. No wonder it doesn't look like how I imagine Neil.

Don't worry, Supernurse Ben will be along soon enough to diagnose Neil.

I think the issue was the way she enunciated 'A-NI-MALS' as if assuming that he couldn't speak English well.....

Too early to tell - she may well do.

Or possibly that he was ignoring her and she thought he was lacking as well as a trespasser, so she was spelling it out.

Crikey, I had no idea BH was so much older than Neil. Worried now! I also love Neil and Susan.

Do you not agree that they were signalling Lynda being racist towards the Asian teenagers?

Had there been some age re engineering going on in The Archers? That's one heck of an age difference for character and actor.

Eddie seems to be too young for his alleged age of 73

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/6jxVtMJBfPx0hzTFbtQKGx/eddie-grundy

I definitely felt there was a subtext there

Less work but a much lower fee for a guilty plea in crown court compared to a trial fee.

@Gonners they are always over the wall at the Cat C near my neck of the woods.
It's unusual to go a while month without a BOLO in the local paper.

Looking into it, he was only hired to come on and play a teenage day labourer for an episode in the 70s, but it went well so the writers kept writing him back in. A 30 something-year old playing an 16 year old is a bit odd, but apparently he had a lot of radio roles like that at the time.