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.

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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.

Helen's eating humble cheese moment was good but quite excruciating to listen to!

At Lidl a 375g puff pastry roll is not made using butter as 320g of M&S "Handcrafted All Butter Puff Pastry" is, but it costs £1.15 rather than £4.75, and tastes pretty good.

The whole point of puff is the butter…

I have to say, my £4.75 (500g) frozen all butter M&S puff was an absolute pig to handle.

Let's hope that Fallon settles down in the pub kitchen; I'm tiring of her coffee shop and pub catering woes.

Blessed are the cheesemakers; I enjoyed that scene.

Not if the non-butter vegan-friendly sort tastes good and you can make excellent lamb spirals using it. (Actually I am not at all sure it is vegan friendly, but I just don't feel like hauling it out of the freezer to check.) Not the whole point, anyway.

Why are Tom and Helen worried about getting business back to bridge farm? Surely wunderkid Henry has all these amazing plans🙄

I'm confused about Wayne - is he such an amazing cook or not? Falls nicely for Fallon though - how convenient

There are amazing cooks of the kind that get celebrated on Great British Menu, Masterchef, the Michelin Guide etc and there are amazing cooks who produce tasty food at good prices without worrying too much about what goes into it beyond what it costs and how easy it is to use and store. Wayne strikes me as the latter. Fallon may have pretensions towards the former.

As previously mentioned, if I'm going to have puff pastry, I save up and buy the all-butter type. The other types generally use palm oil which I prefer to avoid. I bet Wayne doesn't.

Well Wayne’s food must be decent but if he is as good as they say then why was he wasting his time at the bull working for his ex wife

hopefully he’s travelling the world as a chef demonstrator/band guitarist

Hang on, you have a chef?

Has no one posted since that riveting birdwatching / ridiculous plot repetition episode??

Are Wayne and Johnnie going to end up on the same ship, then we can have a "Ambridge Afloat" Spin Off series?

Not impressed.

I'm at the point where I'd go for Ambridge, Sunk Without Trace. Though in the short term I'd settle for the awful demise of Harrison, provided it happens on air.

The Panama Shark?

I wonder if we're now going to be subjected to what the scriptwriters will think is a great plot twist - after signalling that Khalil loves animals we now see that he thinks birds are boring, whereas Zainab liked them so she'll have a revelation that she's the one who actually wants to train to be a vet or become an ornithologist.

I was gagging listening to all the eating noises. Bleurghhh.

As for the bird hide - Robert was, in birding terms - really loud when urging Zainab and Khalil in.

When Wayne first worked at The Bull he was at a really low ebb, as far as I can recall. Alcoholic, lung complaint, tricky on off relationship with Fallon, some understandable tensions with Kenton. He had been a baker, I think.

Did he work with Freda Fry to begin with, and then took over from her after she was dedded in the Great Flood? That was sad. Poor old Bert (Fry). Freda was one of the great silents but Bert adored her and was lost without her. Bert was the Bard of Ambridge. I miss him. I may be the only person here who does.

Wayne was "the best assistant Freda had ever had", so good in fact that unlike her he needed no assistant when she died and he took over.

Oh you’re not alone Gasp I miss Bert too!

Possibly, at the time, I despised Bert’s post-retirement gig as a Lower Loxley tour guide - but I’ve sighed for that era since.

I actually enjoyed the birdwatching because I felt Robert finally sounded like his old self again - in both content and tone. He’s been so irascible since Graham Blockley died whereas I think of Robert as a reasonable, amiable type and hearing him in the bird hide and afterwards in the pub he was very much back on form. It feels logical for Fallon to join the family business at The Bull - it looks like the Terum is literally going down the toilet so perhaps the pub will be able to capitalise on that. Fallon could do afternoon teas in the upstairs room! I still really want her to stick it to Natasha and Tom.

Surprising display of emotional intelligence from Kenton.

I fast forwarded Zainab and Khalil.

I wish Joy hadn't met Mick. After reading about him being a panto specialist, I keep hearing the exaggeration in his delivery.

I was catapulted back to the '80s by your Cookability reference Gaspode - I can hear the jingle and see the flame popping up now. It seems to have set off an earworm loop unfortunately, featuring ticka-ticka Timex tra-la-la, how many kinds of beautiful homes in a Hoseasons holiday brochure and whooaaahhh! Bodyform ...

I agree the non-white characters are often introduced awkwardly. It's realistic they would experience racism at various times but I don't want them to be introduced for the purposes of experiencing racism.

Everything Lil’G said. Only:

It’s so natural for Fallon to join the family business that it really didn’t need a running away to join the circus in Panama to bring it about. The family could simply have realised that it was the right time - and planned an orderly succession. Wayne would have offered a few weeks handover period where he went over his systems and introduced her to his suppliers - and The Bull would have thrown a perfectly lovely party for the village to celebrate his retirement.

This being the 21st c, Robert needs to think a little more carefully about inviting sole teenagers into the hide. For which reason I’m hoping Zainab won’t be spending any time there alone with him. The potential for drama is just too uncomfortable, even if it’s not what the SWs intend. (Though maybe it is. Perhaps there’ll be an awkward misunderstanding when her father returns …)

Thinking about it - the Bull Kitchen Succession writing has been incredibly amateur within the context of the show. The charging station misstep, the offering of the job on the spot to Tracy, Wayne’s sudden need to chase Johnny to the other side of the world … Given how much draaaaama there’s been in the rest of Ambridge, it needed one calm, grown up, no fuss story to balance things - and this should have been it. There was never any need for all this ridiculous nonsense.

It’s as if the writers have completely forgotten how to do their job. Not everything needs some stupid invented and poorly executed conflict or surprise or disaster. The way they’re writing makes everyone seem childish and idiotic.

It’s more ‘up shit creek without a paddle’

I don’t get why they needed the issue with the pastry AND the running away on the cruise ship story? One or the other would’ve sufficed?