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Marriage lines

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

The Archers Omnibus (BBC Radio 4); Sunday Worship (BBC Radio 4); The Reunion (BBC Radio 4)

The vicar in his sermon attempted manfully to justify the idea of turning Radio Four’s weekly fix of religion into a reality TV show by claiming that what they were doing at St Andrew’s, Rugby, was ‘transforming the ordinary things of life into something special and life-giving’. It was a touching service: you’d have to have a heart of Sixties concrete not to be moved by the words from the Song of Solomon, ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart’, or the singing of that great hymn ‘Lord of all hopefulness’. But to discover that Radio Four’s religious branch has succumbed to TV’s obsession with its own weird version of ‘reality’ and actually went out shopping for a suitable couple to marry ‘on air’ is queasy-making.

You could say that Radio Four was being cutting-edge, reflecting the latest social trend towards marriage and against divorce (always a sign that the economy is going under). And Steve and Zoe sounded genuinely happy to have their marriage vows heard by nine million of us (that’s if everyone was up in time and not queuing up to be first inside Ikea). But if you were hoping for a dose of something spiritually inspiring you’d have been better off hearing Susan Carter declaring at the end of Usha and Alan’s Hindu wedding, ‘I felt quite at home you know...It’s surprising when you get chatting how much you have in common.’

For the addict-free among you, Usha is the Indian solicitor in The Archers and Alan is the Ambridge vicar. It’s been a pretty unusual storyline for a soap that used to be billed as ‘the everyday story of country folk’; an attempt by the powers-that-be at Radio Four to depict an England that can cope with multiculturalism. What’s so odd about this is that at the very same time another storyline running through the soap has evoked some incredibly snobbish values as Susan Carter’s son Chris, a mere farrier with no great financial prospects, has started ‘seeing’ Alice, daughter of the local magnate. Some of Alice’s friends and relations have been incredulous. There’s only so much goodwill to go round, it seems, and now that we’re supposedly becoming so laid-back about race we’re reverting to some pretty dreadful attitudes to money and class and the social divide. It’ll be interesting to see whether Chris will ever be allowed by his puppet-masters to whisk Alice down the aisle.

In The Reunion this week, Sue MacGregor brought together the cast of that Radio Four staple, The Navy Lark, which ran for almost 20 years from 1959, broadcast at peak listening time, Sunday lunch. At its height, this comic skit on the disastrous exploits of a fictional frigate, HMS Troutbridge, had as many as 22 million listeners; in other words about half the households in the country tuned into it over their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. If you blurted out ‘Left hand down a bit’ in the office, everyone would immediately know what you meant. MacGregor brought out the reasons for its success — the camaraderie of the actors, June Whitfield, Leslie Phillips and co., who when chatting about making the programme still had that sense of teamwork and timing.