Archers thread #176: In which Ian puts the I in PTA. 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'd like to hear more from Wesley the ashtray collector, 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.)

Thanks to @DeanElderberry for the pithy phrase in the thread title and @CaptainMyCaptain for suggesting it should go in there. At least we've got the spooky disco out of the way for now. Plenty of wooden dialogue in the last few episodes that could go on the village bonfire next week. It's all been too dispiriting to discuss in greater depth. I'll just say that I don't hold out any great hopes that the production team will make a good job of reflecting concern in the farming community about the changes announced in the Budget to inheritance tax for farms. So often they get an expert to talk them through stuff like this but instead of ending up with a realistic storyline they pick out the bits they like the sound of and cobble them together in a totally unrealistic way. Maybe I'll be proved wrong this time. I hope so.

Over to you!

Tom is so deeply unpleasant.
I really hope he gets gored by one of Tonys prize cows/ bulls.

I fear they are almost certainly de-horned, so that isn't likely. The bull Otto, who damaged Tony, did it by kneelng on him heavily (as far as we could make out), and I would settle for the same thing happening to Tom but more permanently.

Tom and Natasha are good value characters so don’t mind them staying around. You need characters that you hate!!

if the bull could go and kneel on pip or Harrison though

Pip for sure. And she is so certain she knows everything about farming that for farming to cause her death would be highly satisfactory.

I enjoyed and shared Natasha’s horror at square sandwiches for a party!!

Proportionally, square cut sandwiches have more crusts than ones cut into 4 triangles. (It’s the same absolute amount, but the triangles have nearly 50% more non-crust edge).

A tiny place called Scotland.

I like crusts, especially when they actually are crusty. (I was told when I was little that they would make my hair curl. Still waiting.)

At least we had a little sign that the SWs do remember some things. I had totally forgotten that of course Tom would have met Kirsty's parents and while it may be childish if I'd been Megan I'd have struggled to be polite too. Tom behaved abysmally to Kirsty when he jilted her at the altar. How she ever brought herself to be pleasant to him again is a mystery to me.

i had a sudden awful (truly, gave me a bit of a funny turn, and i was driving at the time) vision of Helen and Harrison having a fling...

I love my sandwiches in squares (and have curly hair). I would always have windows and my sister triangles

That makes me think of the Playschool windows. IIRC they were round, square and arched. I always picked the arched window.

<Nobody under 55 will know what I'm talking about. This happens more and more.>

Megan might struggle to move on from Tom being awful, but she was wrong that Kirsty didn't move on - Kirsty has also been married since being jilted. Philip is as much to blame as Tom.

Kirsty moved on from being jilted so thoroughly that she later would have had his baby if she not had a tragic, late miscarriage.

Did Megan know about that baby and whose baby it was?

Yes, I thought that. It's fine for Kirsty and/or her Mum to still be angry about Tom, because he was (and still is) a knob. But it's unfair of her Mum to say she hasn't moved on when there's been a whole marriage, separation, and divorce since Tom!

... unless she's trying to rewrite history and thinks that the only reason Kirsty ended up married to Philip the slaver was because she was pushed into his arms through unresolved and unregulated distress over Tom.

More like ‘Philip the who?’

Justin is becoming more and more Disney villain by the day. Are we about to see some sudden Christmas Carol style day of reckoning and he becomes the local philanthropist?

My person crystal ball says that, after seeing the ghost of CYTC, Scrooge sees he light and rushes off to sign over the rewilding site in perpetuity, whilst proclaiming 'God bless us, everyone".

I had a sudden awful (truly, gave me a bit of a funny turn, and i was driving at the time) vision of Helen and Harrison having a fling...

Me too @Brefugee 😱

I decided to listen again this afternoon whilst driving to see if TA is better when you're not falling asleep (spoiler: it's not). And I did wonder if Helen and Harrison might ... oh no, let's not go there!

Well she is partial to a married man

What the heck was that with Justin?!?! (Still 4 mins to go, please don’t let there be more). Ambridge’s adventures in magical realism?

Oh. My. Word.

DH was almost rolling on the floor with laughter during the Ghost of Christmas Future. Do you think that’s the effect they were looking for?

Had me in tears of laughter by the end of “what about the people?”

The worst episode yet. I don't think the actors were even pretending to care.

Oh my!

I loved it!

All of TA should be written by AI! It was raw and heartrending and everything I want in fiction.

Absolute BOOP!

Yeah, bizarre when it went rogue, I had the same thought. Much more understandable when Rex said “beta version, only up for a couple of days”. Well done Robert!

(I’m assuming it’s sampled Rex’s voice and using it to voice whatever Robert types in, from his computer which is quietly linked in … it seemed too directed to be purely AI)

Well, there was more s**t in that episode than the river Thames. Or the Am. Whatever drug the SWs are on, I want some. It would send me dreamily off to cloud cuckoo land where they obviously live. Absolute garbage.
'What about the people?' - dear god.