Archers thread #180: Burgeoning backstories! Continuity, what’s that? 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 think it's a great idea for Helen and the boys to lodge with Tom, Natasha, Seren and Dippity*, 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 www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5244480-the-archers-spoilers-thread-10-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.)

*Can't remember who coined this, but it's genius.

I was strongly tempted to use one or both of the posts suggested for the title of this thread on the last thread, but went for something a bit briefer. However, they're brilliant and will kickstart this thread very nicely, so here they are:

@Sidebeforeself: Beavers, bridge, bunny boilers and busybodies - it's all a load of bollocks!

(I couldn't agree more!)

@DeanElderberry: I don't usually speculate much on the appearance of characters, but do wonder what it is about Miranda that is bringing out the chest-thumping silverback in Brian and Justin? One little bridge game and the course of Ambridge rewilding is set. The face that launched a thousand beavers.

Over to you!

Actually, that’s not too far off - but Vince (to me) is silver haired 👨‍🦳

I don't know if I'm just a misery but I found it so boring. Nellie with her quivering voice and Neil with his. She reminded me of a Dickensen character.
Surprise Susan sat outside too.
The story is really bad ,as longer listeners say they have changed Neil's story. I agree it could have been just a play for the afternoon. Well at least it gives something for Emma Fraud to gush about on the podcast.🙄 Don't know how much longer I can listen to this rubbish.
Oh and I think Vince looks like the bloke who owned the garage in Crossroads if anyone can remember that, his name was Vince too and wore a sheepskin coat. Oh gosh I'm so old.😨

I don't think Nellie is Neil's mother. A 16 year old girl, living at home, working with her family, wouldn't have carried a pregnancy to term and then given birth covertly. The whole thing was utter twaddle and yet another new character dropped in. Emma is off her crust...

Agree with all this, including the Vince bit! My DGM used to watch 'Crossroads' (we didn't have a television till the early 1970s) and I wondered where my mental picture of Vince came from.

I know of someone who did exactly that in the late 70s. She was still at school and gave birth in the bathroom at home. She was my friends brother's ex girlfriend not just heasay and her parents supported her and her child with financial support from the father who was a couple of years older. I met the child.

Guerilla rewilding on R4 Today right now.

Yes. Heard it as Gorilla rewilding and I was really confused how they were native to Scotland. Every time!

guess we know where the lynx came from

Heard it as Gorilla rewilding and I was really confused how they were native to Scotland.

I remember going up in the mountains in Uganda to see gorillas, and being struck that in the misty drizzle, with lots of greenery, next to a dry stone wall, and walking uphill, it did rather remind me of Wales at that point

This does happen.

looks like Emma is doing the baking. I’m starting to wonder how good fallons baking actually is tbh

I feel a bit thick but I have been trying and failing to find out who played Rochelle. Does anybody know?

Me too. I heard the trail rather than the interview, and it took me a couple of minutes' reflection to twig. I was wondering about the colonialist implications of a British man doing illegal releases of gorillas in (presumably) somewhere like DRC. Then I realised, and thought of this thread.

Rosie Stancliffe. But yes, quite hard to find, for some reason. She’s put a picture of herself in the Archers studio on her Instagram feed (and says it’s a dream come true…)

Thanks both for the information and the confirmation that it isn't easy to find out.

With this Neil The Foundling plot line and the reconnection with the woman who discovered him on a doorstep, I did wonder if someone on the script-writing team has read Henry Fielding's Tom Jones...

Rochelle was in the Archers for 3 weeks; it seems odd not to have added her to the cast list, even retrospectively. Rude even.

I'm disappointed about the gorilla news item; it did seem a bit of an odd thing to do (was concentrating on some emails so stopped listening to the radio).

i have a much much darker story in my head. And i knew 2 girls - one of them a border - who hid pregnancies until very very late. And were very clever about it.

It's stupid. I don't like this SL and it is wasting time.

Reminds me of when Angela Rippon used to read the news and said the first syllable of guerilla as if it rhymed with air. No confusing it with gorilla then!

I can't bear the Neil the Foundling SL. Last night's sentimental twaddle was so dreadful that I actually felt unclean listening to it and embarrassed for the actors having to perform such drivel.

Even worse because it has been retrospectively bolted on to such a well developed character. There are characters in TA who are pretty much devoid of personality but Neil is very much not one of them and absolutely doesn't need this backstory. In fact, as far as I am concerned, it will now taint the Neil I have listened to and thought I knew and liked for so many years.

And in line with the rubbish way TA is being written at the moment, it has all been so rushed. Two weeks ago no-one knew Neil was a foundling and now he's sobbing in the car park and having saccharine heart to hearts with yet another character we don't know or care about. If they had to have this SL (for another character) they could at least have made it a long slow burn so we could gradually develop an interest.

I never want to hear Nellie again but I fear she is going to keep haunting us because she clearly does know more about Neil's parentage than she let on. I have a horrible feeling he and we are going to be meeting long lost siblings and nephews and nieces over the next few weeks.

I am seriously considering whether I want to keep listening when the key SLs are the beavers, Joy and Rochelle, and Vince (who I can't stand) playing cricket. Where is the pleasure in that lot?

Btw it is potentially plausible that Nellie gave birth to Neil. When he was 15, one of my brother's friends delivered his 17 year old sister's baby on the hearth rug in their sitting room. Their parents were out, the sister had been in bed all day because she wasn't feeling well, she came downstairs and asked him to ring an ambulance as she had a terrible stomach ache, and she gave birth there and then. No one knew she was pregnant - her parents were astounded apparently.

She said she didn't know she was pregnant - but I was never convinced about that part of the story. This was the early 1970s but even then I couldn't believe she was that naive. I think it is more likely she knew but tried to pretend to herself that, if she didn't say it out loud, it wasn't real. Her parents brought the baby up and she went on to university without him.

Two weeks ago no-one knew Neil was a foundling and now he's sobbing in the car park and having saccharine heart to hearts with yet another character we don't know or care about. If they had to have this SL (for another character) they could at least have made it a long slow burn so we could gradually develop an interest. I completely agree @Godesstobe. It's just come out of nowhere (while apparently his whole family was in on it all this time - so not like Jim and the paedophile) and it has apparently been resolved with unrealistic speed. I don't understand Neil's motivation for suddenly being overwhelmed by all of this when there have been many moments (detailed on here in previous posts) when the issue could have come to the surface naturally, prompted by actual events in his and other characters lives. It's actually insulting to long-term listeners and to anyone who bothers engaging with the programme at all.

This is the thing: they've undermined the structure of the character built up over a lifetime by digging out this new basement foundling story, and the whole street is up and the noise is terrible.

What's more, we can't even rely on the basement swimming pool being watertight.

To say nothing of the alterations going on elsewhere in the district - the dreadful shoddy new builds and the old sturdy characters being neglected and decaying.

Bah.

I completely agree @LillianGish and @WagnersFourthSymphony. Something we valued is being destroyed by people who don't even know they're doing it because they don't understand what made it valuable.

If they really wanted a foundling story and lots of drama with a capital D they could have tied it to Joy and Rochelle, and made Joy the foster mother of foundling Rochelle, who'd gone off the rails as a result of never knowing her birth parents, hence being the restless, drifting free spirt we're told she is. She resents Joy because of having to look after her when Joy's marriage imploded, but ‘you’re not even my real mother!!!'. Whereas Joy loves R 'like you’re me own daughtah' and is constantly distraught at their failure to bond and their ongoing estrangement.

Or something. Maybe with a crime thrown in somewhere along the way in the past if they really wanted to spice things up, but the SWs could have come up with a semi-convincing idea, anyway. And then they could have avoided pinning this stupid back-engineered SL onto just about the nicest, most well-adjusted and secure character in the whole show.

But even in these scenes it doesn’t seem like Neil - he’s talking way too much and it just doesn’t seem consistent with the character

agree above that they are fucking it up - no doubt with the support of Emma Freud who must tell us how stupid we are