Have only skimmed thread so sorry if repeating, but:
he Archers, without a doubt. It makes me want to put my head through a plate glass window. I hate the way it tries to shoe-horn whatever the current issues/concerns of the day are, into the storylines. Also, to add insult to injury, it commits the cardinal sin of lecturing the listener with background information, poorly disguised as casual dialogue, in a way that's wooden and unrealistic.
How many conversations go like this, in RL?
'Oh, hello, Mrs M, how are you feeling after that nasty bout of flu you had back in January? You know, the one where you were given those new antibiotics that made your head explode, and the ambluance took too long to get to you because since they closed our A&E and it has to come that new hospital 35 miles away?
Or like this:
'Look Johnny, we'd love to pay for you to go on the school ski trip to Aspen, with all your new rich friends you met since you won that scholarship to that posh school, but since Dad lost his job when the chicken beheading plant was closed last autumn things have been tight. And what with there being a global recession and everything this region has been hit hard, with no call for experience chicken beheaders like your Dad.'
I know the rule of 'show, don't tell' is difficult to pull off in such a one-dimensional format, but that just says to me that an acted-out soap opera with no narration just doesn't work on radio. It's cringey. And patronising!
Sadly it's on simultaneously to R2 going really crap after Simon Mayo and before Radders and Maconie, so sometimes, on days when Mike Harding is playing hellish finger-in-the-ear folk, I have no choice but to suffer a bit of Archers.