Archers thread #181: Panto Week's behind you! Was that the nadir? 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 enjoy playing badminton with Derek Fletcher, 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.)

Will it be onwards and upwards for TA now, or do we fear even more of these special weeks (Martin and a Christmas Carol, Scam Week, Panto Week) and sudden reinventions of long-established characters (Neil)? I for one have had enough of all that. I want a quiet period of change counting in the village shop, farming talk with suitable sound effects and village gossip over coffee at Terum or a pint in The Bull. Slowly developing storylines featuring the full cast, not a subset for a few weeks with no mention of the others, and all behaving in character. Not holding my breath we'll get any of that, though!

Over to you.

I do hope this is true.

I’d much rather an expensive piece of jewellery goes missing and joys terrible past is exposed and she goes down for the theft

i I don’t understand why mick and joy are being pushed so much tbh

on the R word. I’m glad they seem to have had a longer term SL in mind but there really wasn’t enough to get it to stick into listeners minds so they were in on the joke

having said all that, if they are going to push newcomers I would rather it be the maliks than mick and joy

Shoot out in Jenny’s kitchen and the worktop goes down in a blaze of glory!

I wonder if they kept Jenny's kitchen or ripped it out. Someone I used to know (more money than sense, or taste, or manners for that matter) had the entire basement of her vast, historic house (outskirts of London) turned into a kitchen/diner and all the cupboards etc. were blue Wedgwood Jasperware patterned. It cost a fortune and was Unspeakably Hideous! They sold up about 5 years later and I happened to be walking past shortly afterwards and saw that the builders were in, ripping it out and chucking it on to a skip.

We know it was ripped out, she saw it in the skip 😢

Thank you for the R word explanation @HotCrossBunplease which gives some context.

At this point I think Fallon loves him quite a bit more than he loves her.

That's interesting @WitcheryDivine I've always got the impression he adored her and she felt she was making do with him. Maybe the tables have turned.

To my ear, they have an immature relationship. All that daftness about Valentine's Day. Though I am a miserable beggar so might be wrong!

It was explained that Mr Gill and Mick bonded over Queen.

As far as I have been able to find, we were never told that she saw her kitchen in a skip. Seriously: the only thing we heard about that kitchen after the Aldridges had moved out was Ruth hoping aloud that the refurbishment of Home Farm had not included Jennifer's new kitchen. That was on 8th January 2019 and is in the synopses as "Lynda asks if David and Ruth know anything about the new owners of Home Farm. Lynda called to introduce herself to the Gills, but found only builders there; apparently the new owners have insisted on ripping out all the ‘awful décor.’ Ruth is suitably shocked, and hopes this won’t extend to Jennifer’s kitchen."

The idea that Jennifer saw it in a skip is so persistant that I have gone to the trouble of listening to relevant episodes, and been unable to find it in the early months of 2019 after the Gills had become the owners of the house. If anyone else can, my hat will be off to them! Jennifer did nosey in the garden on 24th February, 2019, hoping to remove Ruairi's much-loved concrete dog, and discovered that it had been decapitated, which horrified her. This incident seems to have happened on the first (and only) time she went near the place when she no longer lived there, and by that time the Gills were in residence and playing loud music, which they would have been unlikely to have been if there was no usable kitchen.

Er, OK [backs away slowly…] That was an, erm, thorough response.

I clearly conflated the memory of the other stuff being seen in the skip and the mention of the kitchen.

Glad that the fictional kitchen seems to have survived another day, I well remember the whole drama of Jenny having it fitted and it feels like it was only a few years before they moved out (Please don’t check the precise date..)

A horror seen on a skip was Clarrie's pride and joy, her avacode suite won in a competition and fitted (badly) by Joe and Eddie. That one definitely did happen, and made Eddie hate Oliver even more than he already had. How dare Oliver buy a house that Joe and Eddie lost by going bankrupt and being evicted! The sheer cheek of the man! and then to fit a bathroom of his own choosing! Pure evil.

I remember the statue and general mess in the glorious garden, but I have no recollection of the kitchen being ripped out (it had more electrical appliances than I knew existed, from memory).

Listening to Mick aside, I am looking forward to discovering more about the house/the Gills.

Susan seemed most put out, which is always worth a chuckle in my book.

HotCrossBunplease
I clearly conflated the memory of the other stuff being seen in the skip and the mention of the kitchen.

Didn't Ed and Emma (I think, or maybe it was Will and Emma) go skip-diving later that year and find that the Gills had thrown away a lot of perfectly good stuff? I think there was something about a Christmas tombola involved.

Do you know what @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime ? I think we may never know.

And that’s OK. 😀

I'm sure the kitchen was spotted in a skip.

Oh and tonight , bore, bore, bore, more Zainab being poisonous and Khalil whining.

Have we heard the names of the new Home Farm owners mentioned before? Although, I can't believe it was 2019 so not exactly new anymore!

On one of the podcasts, I can't remember was talking, one of the main writers or producers, they said "watch this space" in reference to the Home Farm family. So I'm assuming the plan is to introduce them finally as speaking characters.

But yet again, where is the development? If they are present in the village, why in the run up to introducing them haven't they just been dropping them in conversation and dripping bits of info about them? How have we never heard Susan gossiping about them for goodness sake! Now all of a sudden they are close friends of Mick's and they've been invited to house sit.

It's like they've all forgotten TA format and how to write it.

And the milking pouring, again?! 🤦‍♀️

Well let's hope the Gills have cameras all over the house and catch Joy rummaging through all their belongings and inviting half of Ambridge round to have a good nose about.

Thanks @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime i appreciate your meticulousness!

Oh fgs. How stupid is Natasha. Why on earth did they , or their insurers, not employ a professional firm with knowledge and experience of cleaning up bio- hazards.

This storyline is utterly stupid.

In real life of course that would have happened. Yet another poorly researched and badly written storyline.
I think the scriptwriters think of a storyline they'd fancy doing, then shoehorn it in without regard to how things actually happen in real life or whether it's appropriate for a particular character.
I really can't see why anyone would like Mick or want him to housesit. Are we supposed to think he's a likeable character? He just seems so.. uncouth. Perhaps the Gills will turn out to be rough as hell but with stacks of money, but somehow I can't see that, given Susan's, Tom's and Helen's reaction to the news, I think they're probably a bit posh.
If writers need new characters I really wish the writers would just bring in some normal friendly interesting likeable people, they can still have interesting backstories. I'm fed up with the moaning Maliks, mucky Mick and irritating Joy.

It’s interesting that we have just had a storyline that suggested the Maliks were feeling very much alone as Asians in the village (apart from Usha of course) yet it seems from this back story about Mick and “Pav” that the Gills are indeed also Asian, as some had suspected (it’s not a uniquely Asian name, I knew a white British Gill family, so we never knew for sure- and also fairly visible.

IHaveAlwaysLivedintheCastle
I'm sure the kitchen was spotted in a skip.

If you can tell me by whom, and roughly when, I can listen again again, but as far as I have been able to find, Jennifer did not mention this in January, February or March 2019, and I think the skip (or skips) would have been removed by the time the house was being inhabited again.

I'd always thought the Gills were Asian and now wonder if they'd been kept under wraps so they be cast as white or Asian as the stupid SLs are developed, if that's a word one can use about the ways things are in TA lately.

It's odd that this rumour should be so persistent though.
Might she have mentioned it in conversation some time later, in one of those time-honoured Archers references to things everyone but the listeners knows about? It could have been completely cut adrift from the time the fishy-sounding Gills moved in.

I always wondered if they were Asian too (I had a teacher with that name who was) but anyway- as we were hilariously told - they don’t interact with anyone in the village - except as it turns out at GG.

I vaguely recall whoever spotted it discussing with someone else that Jennifer should not be told.