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.

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.)

Over to you!

It’s a scam awareness week across the BBC so I imagine this is all linked to that.

I was very cross about the clumsy mention of the farmers protest this week. I understood that the BBC tries to avoid making political points in The Archers ( ling story but I once lobbied them to include a storyline to do with my work and they refused saying they stay out of politics) , but Leonards comment about it being necessary to raise funds for the NHS was out of line in my opinion. Fair enough, present both sides of the argument , but the exchange was too brief and it ended on Leonard remark.

I agree about that. Better no topical insert at all than one that sounded like it was written and recorded in 30 seconds.

I started listening when I was in my early teens, and I was drawn in by the sort of stuff @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g listed, the sense of inter-generational continuity, connections through workplaces, particularly the different farms, everyone being worthy of respect including the Grundys. There was intermittent criminal activity either current or remembered - Nelson Gabriel's mail van robbery, Tom Forrest' manslaughter trial, Alf Grundy (no idea) Carol Tregorran's shoplifting, Neil's drug conviction, but none of this horrible snobbish writing off of a whole family and casting them as eternal outlaws. And informative stuff about farming and health and safety and cooking and Union membership. And nice characters who we like. Nowadays if we're given one of those we expect it's a signal that they're going to be killed off.

Rather than reading about the theory of TV soap operas the BBC should look at what made their long running rural serial RADIO drama so popular once upon a time.

And what did the continuity announcer at the end mean by 'the collective'?

I admit I think the best radio drama series with a rural setting in recent years was Welcome To Our Village Please Invade Quietly, with good characters established quickly and solidly, the village scene set out well, a good mix of comic sub-plots and the overall story, but that doesn't mean I think Ambridge needs an intergalactic alien intervention.

Probably.

Sorry they let strangers stay in the cottage for free because the strangers had been scammed?

i’m thinking I may just bow out of this week so I don’t have to listen to the stupid crossover stuff. Let me know if Helen gets caught in a romance scam - I could listen to that

things like nut roast that you could mix with water and then cook Oh, I’d forgotten that!

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 Hence all the new young characters and the increasing invisibility of the older ones. Hate it. Everything I’m involved in is trying to “attract younger people” and I’m beginning to feel distinctly unwanted.

I knew there were going to be scam stories clumsily shoehorned planted in the plot because I read the spoilers thread, but if the idea is to raise awareness amongst listeners to enable people to avoid being conned, surely the scam they’ve chosen to highlight is a very odd one.

Jakob hasn’t been taken in by the scam in the normal sense because he’s totally unaware of his cottage (which anyway is actually Chris's property) being listed on a scam site, so there’s nothing he could have done about it. Chuck and Faith are the victims of the scam because they were taken in, didn’t or couldn’t double-check, paid money over to crooks and flew all the way from the US.

Surely Chuck and Faith should be the ones having a Scam Awareness Week targeted at them?

I’m under 50 with older teens who are horrified by how shit the archers is. Ds rolls his eyes at the heavy signposting. Particularly when it’s a PSA or PC storyline

so neither of mine are going to listen when older as I did because I listened with my mum.

if they want younger listeners they need to focus on quality writing- not coming up with SL that older people seem to think younger people will find riveting

That was DIRE. Although I too loved Jakob's Goldilocks line. and why on earth stay in a tent rather than at Brine's?!

Last night was ridiculous but I do hope the story is going somewhere. Mainly because I think if the Americans had realised they’d got the wrong cottage and buggered off, with Kate and Jakob coming back to a ‘who’s been sleeping in my bed’ scenario, the whole thing could have been slightly more amusing.

Very BBC perspective. It's a valid argument but the BBC is SUCH an echo chamber!

Surely you have a bit of an explore and put your bags away before making coffee! Also, that sounded like a pod machine, don’t think Kate would approve of that. The weirdest thing for me was the clip clopping noise Kate and Jakob were making on their walk. Were they riding coconut shell shoed horses?

As the years go by, i
I swear that Ambridge has morphed from an unremarkable village, with a lot of postwar housing, into a Welsh borders idyll.

I guess we are stuck with the "Americans" all week (sigh).

I imagine that Kate's Yurts are either several feet under water, or they were uprooted by Storm Bert!

I wonder how Rex is getting on in his canal boat on the fast-flowing Am?

Nettleteaser101
The American accents were terrible.

Especially since Nathan Osgood is American!

No no no, not Scam Awareness week. That is too long and difficult for the tiny-brained listeners to understand.

It's Scam Safe week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1lGnq3mfpVhGX6PNRgfp2Vf/bbc-scam-safe-week-23rd-30th-november-2024

Just caught up with last night's episode. Unbelievable in every possible sense! Really feel our intelligence is being insulted now.

If they want to alert people to scams they should pick some that might actually happen and show how easy it is even for relatively clued up people to fall victim, eg Helen being catfished, Leonard buying an ebike on line that doesn't exist, Pat sending thousands of pounds of cheese to a fake French wholesaler, or Oliver drawing all his life savings out (if he still has any) to help the "police" bring criminals to justice. (Yes, I do listen to You and Yours I'm afraid.)

I honestly don't know if I can be bothered with TA any more. I spent Saturday in a real village hall with real village people, and the real thing was a great deal more entertaining than anything on TA recently - and marginally more believable. (Although there was one guest not a single person knew and who was unable to recognise my mother whose birthday party it was. We genuinely wonder if they were just passing and decided to pop in for a bit of lemon drizzle and a glass of fizz - although they did seem to have dressed up!) As far as I know, I didn't poison any OAPs so I regard the party as a great success. (Bit of a low bar I know.)

Real village people in real village halls do things like: First Aid courses (I think Harry Booker used to do those and saved someone's life once), Pilates, Yoga, Line Dancing, Knitting, Patchwork, Book groups, After School club, Drama, Santa Claus visits, Art Classes, Lectures for local clubs and societies, 12 step meetings, loads more I can't think of that keep the halls very in demand all year round. That's halls for scattered rural parishes with 400-1000 ish overall population. Ambridge doesn't feel like a normal rural community any more. Too atomised.

Glad the party went well @Godesstobe - did your lemon drizzle cake go down a storm?

It sounds lovely @Godesstobe , Your mystery guest sounds like the unknown man who turned up in the graveyard at a family funeral, kissed my aunt Noreen, and departed, leaving many questions unanswered.

Lemon drizzle was much praised - a very easy Mary Berry recipe, so no advanced cookery skills required - although if you are making it, her portions are too big, even for greedy people like my family. She says the recipe makes 16 portions. More like 32 as part of a bigger spread. We are going to be eating the leftovers for a while I fear.

Very glad it went well! Your mystery guest wasn't called Terence Jolley, was he?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/21/celebrity-victoria-coren

It freeze well - I am taking some down to my Dad tonight that I cooked in the summer and then shoved in the freezer, it's still delicious!

Gosh, I hadn't seen this follow up! If the TA SWs wrote something like this, we'd be eyerolling so hard they'd fall out. John Finnemore could have carried it off, though ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/21/victoria-coren-jolley-gang

And there I was imagining no one had anything to say about last night! Glad to have found you. I have nothing at all to add regarding the Goldilocks scenario - except that I have an innate distrust of Air BnB and always fear disaster - so I did feel in a tiny way seen by the SW. If I was ever foolhardy enough to book somewhere in another country I would completely expect to discover on arrival that I’d been epically scammed.

Hard though it may be to believe now, Brookfield was at the centre of the programme and that worked.

Yup. Everything @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g and @DeanElderberry said reflects my distant memories of listening (at first passively) from the early 1960’s. It did all make sense back then. Nowadays I’m pretty sure neither the producers nor the SWs actually understand the point of the show.