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!

So if the field mice just wander in and out is there any point wanting them killed?

No. They wander in, set up home,breed like mad and shit in your food

Mr Chinnery, Jakob?

Maybe the point was to make us all hate TA and switch off our radios for ever.

Hasn't The Archers turned into a 3rd rate badly scripted soap opera.

I'm 61 and was weaned listening to TA but I've had enough. I'm slowly (somehow) going to wean myself off it. Hubby will be delighted as he intensely dislikes it (they all speak in clichés). I can never listen to it in his hearing as he will walk out of the room muttering.

I may need to find something else to replace it. Any ideas?

Well I like Azra she is busy and smart, she seems to want to know where her kids are and tries to keep them in line whilst allowing them appropriate freedom. I’d be absolutely beside myself if I were looking after a cat and I thought it had been run over.

Helen is such an arse she all but implied that Kirsty had decided not to sell it to her when it was completely the other way round.

But who says they want to ‘trial’ a cat for a day? You can’t possibly know whether you’ll be suited to having a cat if you just borrow one for 24 hours, and it’s likely to hide or take itself back home anyway. Fostering a cat might be possible but I expect they’d have to be rigorously checked for that. It’s just such a bizarre SL.

At least Helen is consistently written. Self serving, superior, cow. How she is anyone's friend is beyond me.

Which member of The Archers is most likely to be on this farmer's protest 🪧, and will they try and work in a reference in the storyline

GoldenPheasant
It becomes even more of a mystery why she was wasting her talents in the TeRum for so long.

The tea room (as opposed to the terum, a name I don't think has ever actually been used in the programme since it was initially suggested) was Fallon's own business, belonging to her, and so she did not feel she was wasting her talents there.

She occasionally catered for outside events, but they were not a core (or the only) part of her business as they are now going to have to be.

No, they'll ignore it as too political.

I would have said old Adam was the most likely to get involved. But since he's decided that he's more suited to packing veg boxes than managing a complex business, probably not any longer. IIRC, he was one of the only farmers on the show who had anything to say about Brexit. I can imagine Pip would be keen to protect her inheritance, whether from the government or her brothers.

Helen is such an arse she all but implied that Kirsty had decided not to sell it to her when it was completely the other way round.

It really was unspeakably awful …

Well I suppose she is trying to make friends with azra as Kirsty won’t be her friend soon

And Helen said ‘Kirsty is at my house’ when talking to Azra. But rich.

She won't be living there any more, and can revert to her loathing of the low-lifes now living on a bit of Her Farm.

You know there is a problem when a psychopathic cat is very low down on the list of TA characters I'd like to see mown down. And I'm not even a cat person.
(Before that last statement attracts hate, I should add that I have owned several cats over the years who have all lived long, happy lives. It's just that I prefer a bit of uncritical love from a dog.)

When I open the arches/mumsnet thread I always go through an old page (just how it opens for me)... post 137page 7... and the top comment is "I always find Helen is so rude and condescending..."
sometimes I don't realise I'm on an old post as they comment can apply to most situations

On temporary/borrowed cats... I once catsat for a friends i had their 2 house cats for 2 weeks in my flat and I decided I was definitely NOT a cat person

Maybe I need to take my rose-tinted spectacles off, but one of the (many) things I used to enjoy about TA was the ongoing cast of characters who appeared regularly even if nothing particularly interesting was happening in their lives. This contributed I think to the continuity of the characters and also to the sense of Ambridge as an interlinked community.

It feels as though this has changed and the SLs now concentrate on a small number of characters at a time while all the others are completely forgotten for long periods. For example, Elizabeth, Vince, Freddie and Lily appear to have been abducted by aliens. Ditto Oliver and Alistair and Denise. I assume this is for budgetary reasons but it means, that for me at least, I am losing the sense of a community. It is just a collection of individual stories that feel disconnected. And when characters do eventually reappear for their turn in the sun, they so often appear to have undergone personality transplants because new SWs don't understand them or their histories.
I don't normally feel like a grumpy old woman but TA is turning me into one at the moment. I can forsee listening numbers declining dramatically and then some smug person will appear on Feedback and say TA is being dropped because it doesn't attract younger listeners - when in fact the real problem is that it just being so badly written.

I feel the podcast they advertised before the archers shows they definitely are going for a different demographic

I’ve lost interest in the George sl tbh. If it ends with him coming out to be a Nasty Nick I’ll be very disappointed in the sw

surely Fallon has her own bakeware? Is her own dining table not big enough to prep? The fact the events barn has no catering facilities is weird

strange stereotyping of Danielle somehow

All the Archers, by blood or by marriage, seem to be competing to see who is the most entitled piece of ordure. Kind of like that moment when you realise that the actual Lord of the Rings was Sauron.

I haven't listened tonight yet.

But something that's been on my mind for a while: was it ever properly resolved on air how the tea room acquired Fallon's kitchen equipment when Bridge Farm took it over? I'd love for her to go back there now and take out the lot because they never bought it from her! Clearly she'd have nowhere to store it right now, but I can dream ...

I think the listeners asked this often enough on various boards for someone in the editorial team to put Tom and Natasha having paid for it into someone's mouth, quite a long time after their putsch.

I assumed Fallon sold them the kitchen equipment for peanuts when her lease wasn't renewed and (a) she had nowhere else to put it plus (b) she wanted the job. Natasha 10: Fallon 0. I don't know what happened to all her "upcycled" furniture, though.

Fallon was given two days to take all her furniture out of the tea room, and stored it in her house for a bit before it was used at Grey Gables for the temporary eating-area before the dining-room was ready for use.

How big is her house? I’m finding this all a bit odd tbh