Archers thread #177: Will Bridge Farm get a PassiveAggressivHaus? 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 love to have a moribund camper van parked indefinitely outside your home, or other unusual views.

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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.)

Over to you!

So many flapping loose ends. To mention two largish ones:

Who changed the sheets/put out the clean towels in the cottage (which incidentally is called The Hobbit, not The Rookery)? Who took the clean sheets and other bedding to the yurt, or does Kate leave all that there all winter to go mouldy in its own time?

What were Kate and Jakob going to eat in their yurt? Were they planning to take the nut roast with them? Or go to the The Bull for a meal? Eat at Brian's house?

Is this a George scam from prison to make money do we reckon?

I think we'll find this ties in with something on You and Yours or Watchdog or Money Box. I have a vague memory that I've already heard of this scam. Odd to have it involving Americans, though. Who'd fly from the US to spend a week in a cottage in Ambridge?

(Caught up now, obviously. If I hadn't been prepared by everybody else's comments I might have thought I was hallucinating at the beginning.)

Chuck will fit in perfectly with the moany men of Ambridge.

Over Thanksgiving too, if they’re staying for a week.

Love the title.

It is beyond ridiculous to suggest that anyone would return your their home, ready to cook dinner, and then move out for the night to accommodate a pair of strangers who entreated your home when you weren't there.

If the BBC wanted to use TA to highlight scams, this is not an effective approach!

Credit for title goes to @Gonners and Totters. Gonners came up with the phrase and Totters suggested it for the title.

Ye gods. I don't know how much more I can take.

Utterly ridiculous on so many levels, not least because the holiday-makers were American. None of that episode was remotely believable - from the misdirected renters managing to gain access to the wrong house, to Kate’s reaction that she and Jakob should just go off and leave them to it, No one - not even Kate - would react like that. It made Joe Grundy’s ferrets in Grey Gables look like a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Well. That was mightily confusing at the start, I also had to check I hadn’t accidentally set 4Extra going by accident.

If they’re trying to raise awareness of scams I’m not sure it’s very bright to suggest the best way to deal with them is to let complete strangers stay at your house while you move out. Hoping for a twist where Chuck and Di (forgot her name) turn out to be the scammers but I know that won’t happen.

If my experience in hospitality is anything to go by the reason Americans turn up in tiny remote villages is because their great great great great great grandfather came from there and therefore it’s “home” (never mind that the vast majority of their ancestry came from Manchester or Andover or Hamburg, it’s always the cutest bit of heritage that is “the old country” and who can blame them really).

Brilliant 😂

Didn't someone (Peggy?) have an affair with a GI during WWII and he came back looking for her decades later? Maybe the Americans are related to him.
Are they going to become permanent residents?
Will the scammer be revealed?

Oh, and thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g for the Fred.

It is getting exhausting.

I did notice some farm talk this week, the cows out to pasture etc.

Are they reading our threads?

If so - please banish Justin. I can't take it anymore!

I was confused at first thinking I was listening to a rubbish play they put on Radio 4. The American accents were terrible.
I wanted to smack Kate in the face, how dare she insist they stay in Jacob's home, that really pissed me off. I would have said Im sorry your in the wrong place and if GG was full they could go to Linda's or the farm. There is no way on earth you would let strangers stay in your home. What a load of rubbish. I dont usually get bothered by the SW but im really angry for them taking us for fools and thinking they could just shovel up anything and we'd love it. I think they get away with this crap because people have been brought up with TA and are so nostalgic about it that they think they can write any drivel and people will still love it.
I think they started the podcast because they knew T A is on its arse and are trying to make out its really good with E F and guest so enthusiastic about it that new listerners will want to tune in. They must get a lot of complaints every week but ignore them. Its worse than Crossroads was now and that saying something.

Re accents - Chuck is played by Nathan Osgood, who is American. Faith by Emma Fielding, who isn't.

I was out and missed it but, reading this, I don't think I'll bother catching up.

Oh God that was awful. I suppose we are in for a week of Hilarious Chaos aren’t we? I only listen periodically now and last nights episode was a classic example of why I do that!

iirc Peggy's long-ago GI love interest was called Con, which would be appropriate.

The only Airbnb scam I know of is the one that happened to me, where my account was hacked and scammers locked me out, and posted a swanky 5* apartment in Dubai on my account with all my positive reviews, then tried to persuade anyone who booked to pay them via PayPal. I guess people may have done that and then travelled to the imaginary Dubai apartment eventually, but the point of it being a swanky Dubai apartment (at a bargain price obviously) was that lots of people immediately tried to book it. Why would a scammer post a fake cottage ambridge as their bait? I don't think so. I think it will be some second homer who has decided to rent out their property and given it a bijou name without checking if the rookery already exists in ambridge. That would be believable and topicalish with second homers and Airbnb landlords in the country pricing out people who grew up there.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but it's really hard to see any reason for the dismal nonsense we're getting so often now other than a lack of commitment to the programme, let's say. They can't seriously think this is the way to pull in younger listeners, can they? (And if they're right about this and I'm wrong, the human race is doomed.)

I fell into listening to TA well over 40 years ago now partly because I was already a R4 listener and it was on so often you couldn't avoid hearing the odd episode, partly because it was already familiar because my Mum used to listen (in the sense of not switching the radio off if TA came on - she was a regular listener in the 50s before the family had a TV), but mostly because it was, at least intermittently, quite good fun and vaguely credible back then. Hard though it may be to believe now, Brookfield was at the centre of the programme and that worked. The younger generation (Shula, David and Elizabeth - Kenton was away for most of the 80s) were growing up and spreading their wings. Phil and Jill were coming to terms with growing older and handing over to David and Ruth. There was a lot more farming talk.

It wasn't just Brookfield, though. Brian was being built up into a compelling character and Home Farm was another key location with Jennifer constantly busy in the kitchen or trawling the Food Hall at Underwood's*, the department store in Borchester, for obscure and expensive ingredients. The Bridge Farm Archers were going organic. The Grundys were less irritating back then, or perhaps just less familiar. The Tuckers were there for contrast as well as the Carters and the Horrobins. Lynda and Robert arrived and made their mark. Various professional people came and went, in a fairly natural way (vicars, vets, GPs). There were several places where villagers naturally met and chatted. The Bull was one, but Nelson's Winebar was another and I loved Nelson Gabriel. Grey Gables was also somewhere the more affluent residents visited regularly to have a special meal or a drink or a meeting or to use the pool or the health club.

In the last few years it feels as if the village has contracted and fragmented. As others have commented, we seem to have a period of weeks or months where we only hear certain voices and then we switch to another set. I really miss the days when we heard all the cast, or at least heard about them.

*When did we last hear any mention of Underwood's? Another location lost.

many many years ago (end of the 80s) we were still living in military quarters in Germany. We were trying out being vegetarians, which wasn't easy in Germany then. So on a trip to UK I'd stocked up in Holland & Barrett (so expensive) on things like nut roast that you could mix with water and then cook. So long lasting. I had one left.

Our neighbour was posted to UK and as his wife worked at a German company she had to give 3 months notice, so we agreed she could live with us.

We went away for an overnight, and when we got back i said "let's have the nut roast for sunday lunch" and... it was gone.

And she came in and said "oh yeah i cooked that, but it was too dry so i binned it". So bloody angry.

That ep was... meh. But thinking about the interactions between the couples, i thought "oh that's Kate & Jakob in 30 years" (and I'd probably have let them stay in my spare room, or isnn't there one in the cottage?)

After first thinking I was listening to the Afternoon Play, I then assumed we were finally being introduced to the Gills and had been admitted to Home Farm at last!

I immediately started looking forward to Christmas in Jenny’s kitchen.

The actors sounded better suited to an am-dram theatre production I’m sorry to say. But Kate has turned into quite a treasure these days so, on balance, I was happy enough. It was much easier to listen to than, for instance, the Markie/dog attack SL or Maid Marion at GG or Justin’s Christmas Carol etc…

That was dire.

So many story lines bubbling under and they gave us that.

And what the Jeff is Scam Week?

It sounds to me fairly typical of something where the people running it either don’t have time to ensure quality, or actively want it to change and are experimenting (or are being pressured to do so). The Archers may have trillions of listeners but they will want to ensure they aren’t all over 50, so possibly some of the stuff they’re trying is aiming to encourage younger listeners - not that I’m saying it’s working or that it’s a problem in the first place 😂

I may be a lone voice here but I think it’s fine. Not every episode or storyline is golden but most of the acting is good and it’s amazing to have so many of the same voices in it that I remember from my childhood. I’m glad they’re reflecting the modern reality of the countryside which is fewer bigger farms and other people either living hand to mouth or working to set up their own businesses.

I do mind the magical disappearing storylines though, maybe someone thinks this keeps people listening but I’m sure it doesn’t. It just feels like there’s no point getting invested in a story because it may well never be resolved. And I would like more farming, or even allotment or gardening type stuff. There’ve missed a trick there as people are interested in those topics hence er listening to the Archers.