Archers thread #199: Kaboom! The Aldridges are self-destructing, and it's GLORIOUS. 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 drop everything to help Helen create a new cheese on national minimum wage, 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.)

If you haven't heard last night's episode (Friday 22nd May) you really must. It's episodes like that that keep me addicted. Funny how often they involve the Aldridges, the most dysfunctional and also by far the most interesting family in Ambridge. Also very well acted on the whole. How lovely to hear Tamsin Greig in TA, but I wonder if we ever will again.

Some cracking posts towards the end of the last thread, which is here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5518503-archers-thread-198-josh-sent-to-patagonia-pip-stays-put-wrong-way-round-discuss-the-archers-here

Over to you!

Ha! That amused me too.

Anna needs to do what my friend did: tell her mother that it is up to her if she gets the safety features, uses the camera or wears the alarm. But that she, Anna, will not come running and Carol can sort herself out when the inevitable happens.

Brian is being an absolute git. Not sure what brought Debbie back (gosh i hope she pushes off again soon, i really don't like her voice) and Adam didn't put his point across well but this all needs to stop. He needs to find a different job and push off out of Brian's life and not help out any more with anything.

Presumably Brian had it written into the contract that he can give one month's notice to remove the land from the partnership. Adam presumably receives a salary as well as dividends/profits.

Kate was being disingenuous because of course it was her fault Home Farm(house) had to be sold and Brian was right to remind her of that. She ignored it of course.

It is clear that Brian wants to give it all to R, and so he can. Adam needs to back right off. He is not wrong to be thinking about the future of the farm. And in his shoes i would be telling his (half)siblings what R had done.

Waiting for Clive's other shoe to drop, as well as Den trying to manipulate Brad into something.. can the writers not write ONE storyline that doesn't have another "compare and contrast" storyline?? (did love Susan finally admitting that she doesn't support Tracy and their father at all)

Lynda and "chilled house white" indeed. What a snob. Does she really think Tracey would serve it warm?!

😂I thought that line emphasised Lynda's faux-poshness.

Kate was being disingenuous because of course it was her fault Home Farm(house) had to be sold and Brian was right to remind her of that. She ignored it of course.

She was also right that it was ultimately Brian's fault for burying the chemicals in the first place. No one comes out of all this blameless, which is what makes it a good storyline.

People like Lynda and Anna - both not giving a toss about the quality of the wine they were buying - are the reason I’m so often disappointed in pub wines and have pretty much given up ordering them.

Annoying!

The secret is to get rosé with lots of ice, or mix white with sparkling water and add lots of ice. )but then I also chill some reds in summer...)

Brian: "Can you have an overreaction to betrayal? ... It"s not a punishment. It's just me making a bid for freedom and I know no one else is happy, Alice, but I am. I am, alright? And you will just have to get over it and get on. Get on with the rest of your lives and leave me to get on with mine!"

That's fighting talk and good to hear rather than him rolling over and giving into his entitled, immature children.

Also, it's a bit rich of Lilian to have a go at him when she has an almost non existent relationship with her son and grandson.

I just feel like I’m listening to a, barely featured for years, mother and daughter bicker every day for ten minutes. They’re as annoying as each other and I couldn’t care less if there’s rails or bats or falls over magazines. It’s so boring.

Except Brian doesn't. He's been more than happy to accept Adam's work when he pissed off Hannah and had no-one to give orders to.

As for Lilian, that's down to the SWs not giving her the lines.

As for Lilian, that's down to the SWs not giving her the lines

You could say that about any of the characters.

I vaguely recall Adam being close to getting a farm manager's role elsewhere but Ian blew that by interrupting the interview to accuse Adam of having a fling with his potential employer.

Adam is the architect of his own misfortune.

So sorry to hear this, @muddyford. Wishing you and your family all the best.

Maybe I haven’t been listening for long enough but I wouldn’t want Adam as a son/stepson. He was hellbent on getting everyone to believe Brian has dementia! And now he’s going the ‘legal route’ to get what he wants. He’s deeply unpleasant.

no one else is happy, Alice, but I am. I am, alright? And you will just have to get over it and get on. Get on with the rest of your lives and leave me to get on with mine

I am so hoping that Brian remembers that one of his favourite things had always being with attractive women, and that getting them pregnant was a bonus, and starts thinking that maybe it he tries again he'll get a nice compliant grateful heterosexual son.

Disappointing for Miranda, but fun for the rest of us.

How can you not like Debbie’s voice? Tamsin Greig is fantastic and when I listen to her I can’t help but think what a much better actress she is than many of the others. Adam in particular isn’t great. He often sounds like he’s just ‘reading the script’. I’ve yelled ‘put some umph into it’ several times when he’s on 🤣

I am so sorry. My Mum cared for my Dad until he went into care, it was incredibly tough for her at a time when her own health was failing.

Brian indulged Kate - he could have sold the land and got her to move her tents (could there be a more portable business?), but he allowed her to stay and sold the house instead. In fact it would have made much more sense to do this and we would have been spared all the fall out of the enforced move - who knows, Jenny might even have still been alive (well apart from the fact that it was Angela Piper herself who wanted to leave - I'm trying not to let reality intrude). Kate is as delusional as Brian when it comes to rewriting history. I'm just counting down until the moment Adam reveals what he knows about Ruairi and the attack on George - Alice will find this, and the ensuing cover-up by Brian - completely unacceptable.

I feel similarly. They really missed a trick not doing this with Jill years and years ago when Patricia Greene was still able to cope with a major storyline. She would have sounded the right age and those of us who've been listening for countless decades would have been waiting for the tension between Jill and Ruth to re-surface, as it always does.

It was a mis-step bringing Carol back and then doing nothing very much with the character. For the vast majority of listeners now she is effectively a new character. I've been listening since the early 1980s and as far as I can recall she never or very rarely spoke during that time and then it was reported that the Tregorrans had moved to Bristol. She'd effectively been written out and it was very odd indeed to have her return to a rented cottage after she was widowed, feature for a few months and then go silent again. Now she's in every other episode.

I liked it when Carol first moved back and was Jill’s friend. As I recall all sorts of people (David?) were suspicious of her, mainly because she proffered herbal teas, but she was making other friends. Wasn’t Kirsty one of them? It was a shame the SWs dropped the character because (as I understand it) the actor wasn’t sufficiently available.

It has been odd that this most obvious s/l wasn’t used with Jill. They just concentrated on her returning to Brookfield and Ruth being territorial. And then the acquiring of a new man. Then complete silence on the topic of caring for an elderly relative.

But the SWs have been astonishingly accurate in their portrayals of the intergenerational friction in both the Horrobin and Tregorran households (how I’ve empathised with Tracy and Anna!) so I have no complaints there.

How long have you been listening? Adam, unlike Kate, Alice or Ruairi, is a farmer. He has devoted the best years of his working life to Home Farm and, along with Debbie, has rescued it from Brian's worst excesses. Brian's solution was always to pour on more chemicals, Adam is the one who insisted they improve the health of the soil - the herbal leys, the mob grazing - to quite literally prevent the farm from being washed away. Rightly or wrongly he has given his heart and soul to Home Farm despite having to live with with being Brian's least favourite. Adam had to stand by while Brian broke Jenny's heart when he brought Ruairi home and asked Jenny to raise him, he knew Ruairi would always be Brian's priority and was even prepared to teach him everything he knew when Ruairi suddenly decided he'd like to try his hand at farming. In so many ways Adam is everything Brian ought to love in son - a passionate farmer who always puts the good of the farm first - but he somehow can't move beyond the fact that he is not his biological father. I also think Brian was probably a bit jealous of Adam - the fact that Brian was so hard on him made Jenny love him all the more. He is a better farmer than Ruairi, he has been someone Brian could lean on in difficult times, but Brian has a thoroughly unpleasant streak - the part of him that continually cheated on Jenny, that expected her to bring up Siobhan's child. He can't bear that his own flesh and blood has not seamlessly slotted into his own mould and he taken this out on Adam. With Jenny gone, there is no one to rein in Brian from his worst excesses - Adam is now at Brian's mercy.

Hear, hear @LillianGish

How can you not like Debbie’s voice? Tamsin Greig is fantastic

Indeed she is but I cannot bear the stammering delivery she uses when playing Debbie. It grates. And Tracey is starting to sound odd to me.

When did Adam come back from Africa? He spent at least ten years working there after graduation, maybe more.

What's wrong with Ian?

He's the sanest character in The Archers!

2003, @DeanElderberry.

Link here, and photos of press article in case the link doesn’t work:

https://www.bbc.com/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/02_february/28/archers_adam_macy.shtml