Archers thread #188: New Order, please! 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 love to spend time with Martyn Gibson, 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.)

In some haste as we are going out for the day. I was asked weeks ago to put I've Killed the Vicar in as the new title but I agree with more recent comments that Peggy's funeral feels like old news now. Great line, though. Sorry not to have used Markie Malarkey, though. I've settled on something that will only make sense to people who were also youngish in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Here's a clue. If a certain person appears in tomorrow's episode the title will be relevant.

Over to you!

If she's working for her parents (and I still think that's a big if) they've had a row and she's stormed off (she says) so they won't be expecting her to turn up at work.

After listening tonight I can see this @Godesstobe and agree with you I don’t think I would mind that either. It’s ludicrously fast and silly but if that’s the end result then maybe it might be ok eventually…

Doesn’t change the fact the actress is too old and that’s what makes her sound so wrong

How come they didn't know about the rain? Surely they'd check every morning. Don't they have phones with rain radar?

Bloody silly.

Why do the SW expect the listeners to like these repellent characters? I think we're supposed to like Pip, we're definitely supposed to like Joy and now we're probably supposed to like Amber. They must think the listeners are a bunch of total weirdos if we're expected to like any of those awful people.

I like Joy. Pip is pretty awful but pales into insignificance compared to Amber and Eddie.

Are we really supposed to think Eddie is a loveable rogue?

Oh but eddies going to get the bull to win an award and then there will be coach loads of people visiting and it will be busier than ever and everyone will be happy, except Eddie because the price of a pint will double

I like Joy too. Okay, she witters on and I might cross the street to avoid her if I was in a hurry, but she means well. I'd rather have her in the shop than Susan, who has a hideous voice and needs throttling.

I would definitely cross the street, or possibly leave the country, to avoid bloody Lynda Snell!

I don’t post often but read regularly. I have been listening to The Archers for 34 years, although did grow up with it, and at that time found it tedious. I think I am back finding it tedious and puerile. The storylines are tedious and the way of introducing two dimensional characters: Joy, Mick, Rochelle and Amber, for example, has done nothing but make The Archers like one of the worst Radio 4 comedies (of which there are many). To engage with a character they need to be introduced slowly and have some connection to characters already embedded. Alastair and then Jim, Tracey, Brad, Jakob and Stella are all accepted and have been introduced slowly with no issue.
I have a vision that the scriptwriters are very young people with no understanding of writing good scripts but just sit around a table throwing around ideas with no understanding of context and development of characters.
could we start a protest?

I’ve always liked the archers because it was character led around a farming calendar

agree that it looks like they sit around a table and pick a plot and don’t really care about anything else

I dunno, earlier this week everyone was saying they wanted farming. Last night they gave us farming and still no-one is happy.

The problem with last night was Amber!!! The hat making was nice to hear but then again they had to add in unnecessary drama ‘oh my god dad, I know no rain was forecast today but now it’s saying 90% chance of rain in the next hour’ followed by ‘lucky it was only a few drops’. Do they take us for credulous fools?

hoping Eddie and Amber get the full wrath of Clarrie when she finds out about the Neil conversation

I would love Clarrie to go on strike and stop cooking, cleaning and generally being a slave.

@HarlotOTara ,the SW are of different ages. The SW who wrote the Scambridge episodes is in his late 70s. Keri Davies has been a SW since at least the early 1990s. Katie Hims was writing script in the 1990s. The others might be young.

Does Oliver like sharing his home with the Grundys? What does he get out of it? Housekeeping and cooking from Clarrie? Companionship? Does he play cards/watch telly with them of an evening or stay in his room playing on his X box?

He's already got Grundys living in a mobile home on his land and now he's got a virtual stranger in his spare room.

Or does he live at Grey Gables?

I really don’t know what the SWs were thinking when they moved Oliver in with his tenants.

Caroline had died - and they don’t like single person households for obvious radio reasons, but no one like Oliver has ever in the whole history of the world done such an inconceivable thing. They could have crafted far more interesting and realistic stories by keeping him in his GG suite. (Which wouldn’t have needed to be involved in the general upheaval.) It’s all very odd.

They said they had checked, and the rain was a sudden new forecast since that morning.

They need a better weather app - the one where you can see the satellite images and make your own judgement

I'm putting it down to the heat, but I almost enjoyed Thursday/Friday lunch's episode. It had swifts and they were harvesting hay (which they probably should have done a good few weeks ago, but never mind).

I've spent the past week glued to the free "RainToday" app and its rain radar up in what was possibly the only cold and wet bit of the country. It is inconceivable to me that a decent farmer would be without any tech (though I forget that the Grundy's were hopeless).

There can't be much land left at Grange Farm: Didn't Oliver have to sell a lot of it to the Titchenors to fund the Grey Gables refurb?

I still think the Amber storyline is daft. There can't be that many farm supply places in Borchester, yet nobody appears to have heard of her family or remember her.

It's possible that one of this year's scriptwriters is under forty.. Maybe even two of them.

In order of appearance:

Avin Shah – has been an actor for twenty-five years.
Sarah Hehir – was a teacher until she won a writing prize in 2013; she might be in her thirties.
Keri Davies – has worked on TA since 1991.
Katie Hims – first radio play in 1997; she was was the BBC writer in residence from 2001-2002.
Shaun McKenna – was at the university of Bristol from 1975–1978, which puts him in his late sixties.
Naylah Ahmed – was working as a producer for TA in 2010, might be under forty.
Nick Warburton – born 1947.
Liz John – no idea; might be thirties from photographs, has been writing for "Doctors" and other radio and TV since 2001.
Sarah McDonald Hughes – first professional work seems to have been in 2007, and she might be under forty.

Madcats
There can't be much land left at Grange Farm: Didn't Oliver have to sell a lot of it to the Titchenors to fund the Grey Gables refurb?

Oliver bought the farm house and buildings, with fifty acres of land. He sold ten acres at auction to pay for the senior shareholders in Grey Gables having employed someone useless to run the refurb, and they was bought by the anonymous Miles Titchener with instructions from Rob that it was to be for Jack Archer.

I'm quite liking Amber, and I too think under Clarries guidance she will come good. And she might be the making of George. Her work ethic seems to be good - she's obviously worked on herself, has a job and a growing Instagram following and has proved that she can muck in and she's obviously charmed Eddie!

They could indeed become a new power dynamic taking the grundies out of surfdom

I've just thought I wonder if they are channelling Harriet Cowan (Clarksons Farm series 4), although she is a proper farmer.

I wondered about the “Harriet” angle after last night’s episode, but I think the storyline will have been in development for too long for them to have had that idea.

My thought is that she will charm Oliver and get a job at Grey Gables (thereby allowing the place to be central to the drama without needing Oliver) AND/OR she will become Freddie’s first love. Either way I expect Lily will be pissed off, which is no bad thing.

I’m not really too fussed about George, but it wouldn’t be Ambridge if there wasn’t a Grundy with a chip on their shoulder.

If we don’t get an Amber/Mia showdown this summer I’ll be almost as cross as when they dodged the Philip Moss trial.

I wasn’t listening properly but did I miss-hear that she has pulled a sickie at the agricultural supplier?

Oh I know. Amber is George's stalker.

And she's probably a psychopath (being thought of as marmite absolutely horrendous by some and adored by others), and this is teeing up some sort of Complex Storyline about mental health.