Archers thread #191: Mulligan: stew made from odds and ends; second chance after poor shot. Both fit the bill. 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 like George you like your steak very well done, or other unusual views.

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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.)

Mulligan mostly makes me think of John Finnemore's Souvenir Show. This is good, and tenuously connected to a recent TA storyline

Over to you!

I love Freddie.

But his circumstances are a bit different, in that he's got a stately home to fall back on, though I suppose George has chainsaws.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but are we supposed to believe the Archers and the Mulligans grew up on neighbouring farms, and yet no-one has ever met Esme before? Have any of the writers actually spoken to anyone from a rural community?! Even if they somehow didn't all go to the same school there's no way they wouldn't know everything about each others' lives already, and they'll have crossed paths growing up at Young Farmers etc.

Thanks Totters - I did wonder if it was a different actress. Why oh why don't they replace Pip?

I know she isn't popular but I'm on Pips side about Esme, she should be selling the stock David and Ruth are not her unpaid staff and thier own farm is going to suffer soon. They cant keep helping her, and now she will be great because she opened a fence!. It's not what would happen in RL I'm sure.
Hope George gets a job as a meat packer then he can stop feeling sorry for himself and his mum can stop blaming everyone for not forgetting what he did in the first place. I can just see Emma bragging to fagash about her dear boy not needing a job in her smelly pub.

Yes, I don’t understand why Esme doesn't sell the cows.

Could Josh take over the tenancy? I'm determined he and Esme will wed.

I wonder if there is a waiting list for tenancy farms. I know it's on a much much smaller scale but round here it's 9 years waiting list for allotments ( I was looking the other day),unlike when Adil got one the same day he applied.

Pip was very ungracious, even rude, to Esmee who is recently bereaved. I agree E needs to start coming up with a plan for the future but in my world you certainly cut people slack until after the funeral at least. IRL Ruth and David would have rustled up some short-term workers to handle the milking and E would have just had to find some cash to pay for them while she sorted out matters with the landowner. This village fete approach to the situation is tiresome.

Why did the SWs let Pat make such a song and dance of writing a supportive statement for George during his trial without her following up and offering him his old job back now. Adam isn’t around any more and taking on someone who is down on their luck is Pat’s bread and butter.

I don’t know anything about tenant farming but surely the landowner would be all over this - this can’t be the first time they’ve had a farmer die unexpectedly

The absence of any organised farm relief service in Ambridge is mad. It also makes it impossible for anyone to notice that the spread of skills and networks between the Aldridge Macy siblings - Adam farming, culinary specialist in the family, Debbie farming, Kate business and hospitality, vet in the family, Alice engineering and stables stuff, farrier in the family, Ruairi business - makes them very well positioned to set up a farming supports business that could run alongside their own farming activities.

Agricultural tenancies aren't like houses. You usually pay on the quarter days, and notice periods are longer. You can usually leave form tenancies to the next generation, which you can't usually with a house.

In any case, we don't know who the landlord is, whether it's a council farm or someone else (one of the neighbouring farms where I grew up in Dorset was owned by a Cambridge college,andhad been farmed by the same family for generations.) It's possible they haven't been informed yet.

You’re helping them, @EBearhug!

I did honestly think the whole story would be tied to the info below, and David, with his NFU experience would be all over it, but apparently not. I would have been delighted if Esme had been able to succeed to the tenancy, but she clearly ineligible, so 🤷‍♀️

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/aha-tenancies-and-succession-explained/

I thought Pip was really nasty to Esme, someone who has just suddenly lost their father and trying to sort out out a muddle of admin, not even had the funeral yet. What a sulky self obsessed individual she is. She wasn't bothered about the loose cow, until it got in the field with their own cows.

I haven't heard last night's yet, but surely Esme can't sell off the herd until she has probate. I am not a lawyer, but surely the process in England goes something like this (in real life, anyway):

1. Is there a will, properly drawn up, signed, dated and witnessed? Who is the executor? Does the executor want to act? Does the executor want to appoint a solicitor to do most of the work?
2. If no will, who's going to act as administrator for the estate? Do they also want to get a solicitor involved?
3. What are the deceased's assets? What are they worth? What are the deceased's debts? What liabilities will the estate incur (funeral etc)?
4. Fill in probate forms listing all assets and liabilities, including working out whether inheritance tax is due.
5. Pay HMRC if IHT is due.
6. Get grant of probate.
7. Pay off debts.
8. Realise assets and distribute in accordance with will or intestacy law.

All of which could take months. Are there special arrangements for cases where the deceased's assets are living or perishable things?

Often banks and financial institutions will release balances of up to around £30k before probate, if you can show you are an executor and sign various liability forms and of course have the will or a certified copy. That would then allow her to pay for relief milkers, if there's actually any cash.

Yeah, but it's going to make it more fun when Esme and Josh get together.

I appreciate there is a lot to shoe in to short episodes, but does anyone else find if weird that nothing is ever said about how Poppy is coping with the car crash (no pun intended) that is her family?
She's 12, her mother died when she was 4, she had 2 maternal half siblings (Jake seems MIA, presumably no contact with the Grundys), a paternal half sibling who has just got out of prison and Keira who is the child of her father's ex wife and uncle - ex-step-sister /cousin? With that chaotic upbringing it would be weird for her not to have mental health problems.

Pretty much ditto for Keira, plus Emma clearly has George firmly as her priority and seems to completely ignore Keira.

I hope George gets a job, turns himself around, Amber gets pregnant then George falls into a threshing machine. Then it turns out to be Brad's baby anyway. Or Ruari's! That would be great.

One might alternatively observe how fortunate Poppy is to live in the midst of a large, interconnected clan who all love her and mostly love each other despite current and historic failings out. She has countless Grundys, (and by extension Carters and Horrobins, and Mia, plus the rest of Nic’s silent family) to call on for moral, or practical support at any moment of the day or night. (In a sense she’s better off than Kiera as she has non-comedy-yokel relatives outside Ambridge, who might provide escape if it’s ever necessary. And she has a half sister at university, which broadens her own horizons considerably, compared to the Grundy clan.

Yes, she’s suffered an awful loss, and perhaps the familial complications might trouble her more as she grows up, and George’s incarceration is mortifying - but quite honestly, compared to the children of MN posters who claim to live with no family connections and no friends whatsoever, I don’t think her day to day life can be all that awful.

for real?

I know she isn't popular but I'm on Pips side about Esme, she should be selling the stock David and Ruth are not her unpaid staff and thier own farm is going to suffer soon.

It takes longer than a couple of weeks to organise that, and as David said she needs to maximise what she makes from that. Pip is whining ,but she was fine about dumping her daughter on Stella at 7am. I wonder if Stella is allowed to whine about that? (agree that David and Ruth are doing too much, other farms in the area should also be stepping up. And who is the landowner?)

The thing about Esme is she appears to have had no interest in the tenancy. She hasn’t been involved in the farm, she hasn’t been helping her dad - yes she knows how to chase a cow into a trailer, but she’s got a career of her own and seems to have had v little contact with the farm up to this point. It doesn’t hang together because no one who knows anything about farming has thought it through properly - Meadow Farm only appeared on the map a few weeks ago. She’s clearly been brought in as love interest for Josh who has miraculously started speaking again after months of silence and we are being reminded that he is a competent farmer even though the casual listener might have thought Pip, the Pope of farming, was running Brookfield single handed. How quickly can he and Esme get together to bring another farm into the mix (making up for the loss of Willow Farm and Grange Farm over the years)? I’m actually finding it quite painful listening at the moment because every twist throws up so many questions.

The girl that played Amber has now joined the Harrison actor and got a job on Corrie I think which is going to be more lucrative and high profile than the Archers 😂 Hence the new voice.

But why take on an actor for a role for such a short time and then change them? I would have thought contracts were for longer than that.

@BobLobla , the old Amber was ex-Corrie. Maybe she is returning to it.

@CaptainMyCaptain , the TA gig is something like 6 weeks each time.

They did replace the previous Pip, and it wasn't an improvement. Helen Monks wasn't wonderful, but Sean O'Connor's choice for replacement is dire.

Apparently Archers actors don't have contracts, they are all (as it were) casual labour.

At least three have said they don't know whether they will be in the programme during any given week until they are sent a script for the episodes they'll be appearing in, and at least two have said they didn't know their character was being killed/got rid of until they got a script in which it happened. Tom Graham even didn't know he'd been replaced as Tom Archer until he heard his replacement speaking in an episode!

I liked Helen Monks as Pip. She wasn't a likeable character.