Archers thread #179: Beavers, livestock, ferrets, but nododo! 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 be happy sharing a hot tub with Mucky Mick, 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.)

The title started life with @JanglyBeads, whose autocorrect turned 'Oh no, nor do I!' into 'Oh no, nododo I!' on the last thread. For reasons of cowardice/prudence/lack of inspiration and the character limit, I haven't included @BeaLola's even more mysterious autocorrect - her phone had her asking Abdul if he'd always wanted children instead of Neil. Perhaps one of the mooted beavers can be Abdul.

For the first time ever I've added a poll to the OP. Over to you!

I didn’t think this was going to be about in becoming a social worker, so much as about his desire to help children …. ‘Hey, Fallon I know you don’t want to have a behbe, but worrabout us becoming foster parents?’ Tying in neatly with Neil’s previously unheard back story. Although of course they’ve tried this storyline before and it’s just fizzled away.

If Fallon doesn't want children of her own she's hardly like to want to look after other people's troubled children.

I think Harrison wants a behbe of his own, a My Son or Daddy's Little Princess, to whom he can to pass on the wondrous Burns Intelligence genes. Someone else's just won't do.

Perhaps he is more suited to Hannah….

Oh my god! What have I started!! That would be amazing (and apologies if I kept anyone hanging I was in a yoga class!) - sadly no! I meant social workers.

This also gives me a bit of insight to say that fostering is incredibly difficult. I honestly am not sure Harrison would be up to it. Confidentiality is really important as well as keeping your cool. So...

@NetballHoop I agree. It would be excellent in the right hands. Get your pitch in!

Does Scarlet need to have an local accent to portray living on a miserable estate and abuse?

Surely Fallon would fail any interview by Social Services given her lack of enthusiasm

she needs to cut Harrison loose

And it's sadly topical because there's a serious shortage of foster parents right now. Desperate for the children who need looking after, but Harrison is going to need a personality transplant to be suitable. Not that such a detail has ever stood in the way of a PSA.

Of course she would.
Years ago, due to an extended family situation, I underwent assessment to be a kinship foster carer. It was months of meeting and discussions with the assessing social worker about every aspect of my life, relationships, attitudes, values, they spoke to my children, siblings and parents, I went on courses, culminating in an interview in front of a panel. It was an extremely intrusive process, there's absolutely no way that Fallon would be accepted and because of that neither would Harrison.
I wonder whether if Harrison decides he wants to foster that would be the catalyst for Fallon to finally leave him.

Feels a bit like they’ve been binge watching beyond paradise

The problem with Scarlet was that she sounded like a young Lily Pargeter - more than capable of looking after and standing up for herself. And her voice is all we have to go on in a radio drama. After Blake's OTT consumptive performance they seemed to have gone to the opposite end of the spectrum with Scarlet. It felt like a blatant follow-up of Neil's unlikely revelation about his Mrs Bun the Baker abandonment and foster care merry-go-round without even the slightest attempt to make Scarlet sound like a child who had been in the least bit disadvantaged. DH and I actually laughed when we heard her and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the effect the SWs (in the true meaning of the initials 😉) were going for.

i really wanted Harrison to get back to the car to find Scarlett had sprayed ACAB on the windscreen or something

But it isn't distortion of his character. He has been depicted as a self-absorbed rule-bending nasty, determined to get his own way, from the moment he started stalking Fallon.

I very rarely disagree with you, @LillianGish, but I do here. Scarlett sounded very young, and that was really all I heard. A vulnerable child, no family in her life other than her mother, mother paying far more attention to newish partner than to her child. Far from an unusual story, unfortunately, and it happens across all social classes. Look at that dreadful story of the woman who went on the run with a convicted sex offender and their baby died. Nothing to indicate that Scarlett is at that sort of risk but she was clearly neglected. I am a soft touch, I suppose, and I felt very sorry for her.

The contrast between the content of Scarlett’s dialogue and her accent was risible. And Burns really has no clue, does he, if such relatively mild adverse circumstances get him all hot and bothered.
Ignorant pillock.

Harrisons chat with the girl was awful. Borderline inappropriate at times and just odd.

Scarlett sounded young (which she is)

If I understand the comments on this thread correctly, a child who is well spoken/sounds middle class is unlikely to be the victim of neglect or abuse? Oh dear.

No, a child who repeated stuff along the lines of ‘We don’t talk to pigs/the Social’ is unlikely to have the accent of privilege.
HTH

I don't think that's the accusation. The picture being painted of the setting was quite rough: 'a miserable part of town', 'you get a lot of domestics', and then things that may or may not have been hints - upstairs flat, van outside. I think people were basing their judgements of her background on that rather than an assumption that abuse only happens in certain settings.

If we complain about anything to do with her voice, I was more concerned with the age than the class. There's no way that child was 10.

No! Though I did wonder if it might come across like that when I was typing my previous comment. Harrison and his boss had a call-out to the rough part of town - I surmised this from H's comments about being glad he lived in Ambridge etc. I was picturing a rough-ish estate where police had been called (not for the first time) to a disturbance in a flat. I was picturing a slightly neglected-looking child sitting outside on a wall until said child opened her mouth and said in stage school tones that she wasn't allowed to talk to the pigs. As @RegimentalSturgeon put it so succinctly: The contrast between the content of Scarlett’s dialogue and her accent was risible. Of course well spoken/middle class children can be victims of neglect/abuse, but that didn't feel like the situation here. It felt like another unconvincing scenario coming hot on the heels of the reinvention of Neil's childhood and the thwarted badger bombing. I just don't believe it's real anymore (and just to be absolutely clear - I know it's not real, but I still want to believe that it is!)

Well over 10, I think. She was in the adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford in 2023 and has an acting credit from the Young Vic from 2018.

Child actor accent aside... I find Harrison annoying and think he's a prat, but I am interested - to some extent - to see where they take the storyline about Fallon not wanting a child and him obviously wanting one which it felt like they were starting up again last night... In the vain hope it'll end up with them splitting up, him buggering off, and Fallon getting someone better. My current theory being Fallon and Ed will have an affair. Whether Ed is better than Harrison is questionable though!

A middle-class child would obviously have said "One isn't allowed to talk to the pigs". (In the context of the Archers, I did a bit of a double-take at that anyway, and wondered if she'd been banned from Berrow.)

Does anyone call them pigs anymore?