Archers thread #183: The Scorekeeper's Apprentice. 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 like to share 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.)

Credit for the title goes to @TottersBlankly who suggested it and @BeatriceBatchelor who coined this lovely phrase. (It's led me to take a look at the Wikipedia page for The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I had not known before that the animation in Fantasia that goes with the Dukas symphonic tone poem is more or less unadulterated Goethe, and the story goes back to ancient times. You learn something every day.)

At the end of the last thread, there was an apocalyptic tone as we were all bemoaning the lack of continuity and farming storylines (especially lambing, which used to be a big theme at this time of year). Are there any reasons to be cheerful? (Not just Part 3 - another reference for the older listeners here. ) Over to you!

Totally agree @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g, pure and utter drivel.

A useful PSA would have been that the deadline for buying NI credits to fill in any gaps for those aged 40 - 70 is fast approaching.

What might have worked is for Eddie to fall for all sorts of Freeman of the Land type nonsense and refuse to pay any taxes or NIC, leading them all into penury when it turned out he had no pension entitlement at all. He could have ended up in prison or sectioned, Clarrie could have gone to live in Great Yarmouth with her sister Rosie and the remaining Grundys, who are less awful, could forget about Grange Farm (the farmhouse, anyway) and leave Oliver to live there comfortably and silently (he seems to have become a silent character) for the rest of his days. Not going to happen, obviously.

This will have been noted by SWs!

Has NuRobert had a brain transplant? Quite apart from the issues in looking through someone else's loft with a minor, teaching Khalil how to make "deep fake" images on his father's laptop is idiocy.

It used to be the case that if you had less than 10 years towards state pension you got nothing. Might have changed now.

Is it possible to revive my love for TA or do I just have to accept that it is irrevocably broken and will never give me the same pleasure it used to?

There are still some good scenes and some enjoyable characters and SLs but it is being spoilt by all the things people complain about on this thread, including, in no particular order:

• Joy and Mick and Rochelle;
• ludicrous SLs that come out of nowhere and disappear equally quickly eg Neil the Foundling, pantomime week and scam week;
• over reliance on slap stick "comedy" like the supposedly hilarious cricket club shenanigans;
• lack of continuity in SLs and character development as characters disappear for long periods into a black hole (currently, for example, Adam and Ian, Denise and Paul, everyone from Brookfield) meaning there is no longer a sense of Ambridge as a real place with an ongoing life;
• SWs who appear to have no common sense or even a basic understanding of how normal life works (eg insurance or pensions or Joy's unexplained wealth);
• loss of key locations like Home Farm, Grey Gables and Brookfield kitchen (which, again, used to contribute to the sense of continuity);
• SWs who appear to have no understanding of how longstanding characters would behave;
• major reduction in farming stories and background - I have really missed lambing;
• and so on, ad nauseam.

I am absolutely not opposed to change and new characters in TA. I don't dislike Pa Malik and Khalil, for example (although I find Zara and Zainab boring) and I am totally up for a bit of Ramadan and Eid (although I didn't like the patronising way they have been force fed to us when I, like many/most people have worked with Muslim colleagues and had Muslim neighbours and known about Ramadan, etc for literally decades). I do find the Snells' apparent obsession with the Maliks very creepy though.

But TA has just lost all its charm for me. I listen now with mounting irritability and cannot engage enough to comment on SLs in this thread. The rest of you seem to be managing. How are you doing it - because I would so love to be able to? Or is TA in fact broken for everyone and we are all just living through its drawn out death throes? I know TA has never been perfect, but am I deluded to think it used to be so much better?

I only listen so I can chat on this thread tbh

Btw if Clarrie hasn't been claiming her pension that might have been a smart move. I am a couple of months younger than Clarrie and carried on working for a few years after my pension age without claiming my pension. For every year after pension age that you don't claim you get money added to your pension (for life) when you do start claiming. From memory this was about £500 a year added to my pension for each year deferred.

There's a useful PSA right there.

Apparently for average life expectancy it works out about even.

However, in Ambridge where everyone lives to at least 95, and being 100 is just an ordinary birthday, it would be a very good move.

No, you’re not deluded, @Godesstobe - it used to be better. One used to have the impression the SWs knew what they were about, because it seemed like a real place, with real people.

The Archers has been DOGEd. Those with the experience, knowledge and who actually give a fuck have been ruthlessly excised and what we have now is what the consultants have cooked up.

Well, exactly. I very rarely look at my wedding photos. If they got destroyed I'd be sad but It wouldn't be the end of the world. If my children saw fit to dress up in our wedding clothes and photoshop our faces onto photographs of them, not only would it be totally cringey but it certainly wouldn't replace the lost photos. How could it?

Another option is to claim it and invest it. I'm claiming mine from May and paying it into my private pension pot so the Government adds 25% to it.

My DM is 95 so I am hoping I have inherited her genes and will get my money's worth.

I'm completely bored by the Maliks. It seems almost impossible to have an episode without at least one of them. The conversations between Lilian, Fallon and Jolene and Freddy and Rex earlier this week were a welcome break.

I'm fed up of Lynda too- and when did the cricket team come into her purview?

NuRobert is an idiot- on what planet, even if one were unaware of the 1990 Act - does anyone think it's ok to log on to some one else's laptop on the basis that person's password is known to a child?

Joy has been there 6 years and we knew there was some unexplained back story so I don't mind the Rochelle storyline.

Why hasn't Peggy been dedded? That storyline affects so many characters- particularly if she's left a problematic will (which she will have)

Where are Ruth, Will, Adam, Ian, Denise? Alastair got pointless 2 liners in the tea room but otherwise has only been used recently as a minor prop in the llama drama starring Lynda and Khalil.

Tracy has gone from being generally a good mother to apparently forgetting she has a son, let alone noticing the pressures on him.

Why do the sw think we care about the maliks wedding photos? They need to build the characters up so we can get a feel for them and then care about their own sl - at the moment they are randoms

I've just remembered that in my dream last night my DS was Brad Horrobin. Blimey.

Rochelle is sort of a random but tbh the story of a 15 year old girl being left on her own in the summer holidays by a flaky parent, things spiralling out of control ending with her feeling she has to have sex with a "good guy/ good Samaritan" is a much better and realistic storyline.

IHaveAlwaysLivedintheCastle
Robert presumably hasn't heard of The Computer Misuse Act 1990.

He should have done: in 1990 he was a self-employed computer software specialist who had his own company, and he was presented as being excellent at his work.

I don’t even think the bit about Emma rang true, all the tree surgeons round here have waiting lists of months… they might be able to squeeze in an emergency, but certainly not in the next 20minutes because they are sitting around waiting for work to come in.

Was it Clarrie or Susan who was seconded to the team room during sewagegate and got massive acclaim for her cakes? I’d rather like it to be Clarrie who then gets the job at the bull and pulls in a load more customers, leaving Natasha even more furious….
I think it was Susan though - was Clarrie sent off to do manual labour (gardening?) which struck me as all shades of wrong given her age (meaning the roles were probably better reversed).

I think Clarrie made (an inevitable) lemon drizzle but it was dismissed by Gnasher as sub par.

Which was odd. One the few actually funny comedy moments was When Caroline Dropped the Wedding Cake before Will and Nic's wedding. Said cake having been baked by Clarrie and meeting with much approval from Caroline and Ian.

The rest of you seem to be managing. How are you doing it - because I would so love to be able to? I think it helps that it only lasts for about 13 minutes a day and with BBC Sounds you can now listen whenever you like while you are getting on with something else. I agree that the SWs have totally dropped the ball for all the reasons you outline @Godesstobe, but being able to talk to people on here who remember what it used to be like helps me enormously so that even if the SWs seems to have no idea what's happened in the past (Neil the foundling being the most major example of this recently) so many on here do and I find that a tremendous comfort (particular thanks must go to @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime).

Someone mentioned Caroline and I felt a real pang.

Thank you! I am now in the state of mostly commenting on things which happened before the Neil crap, since that is when I stopped paying any great attention to what was allegedly going on in Ambridge. That particular SL was so bad that I'd had enough. It's now as much about the Archers I have known for most of my life as a Jeffrey Archer autobiography has to do with observable reality. And even comments about things which happened before this editor started to pig about with the programme now have to be prefaced with careful caveats about "on air" or "in one of the BBC's official books about the programme", really.