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Sunday 7 September 2008

Reality bites

The Archers (BBC Radio 4); The Afternoon Play (BBC Radio 4); Between the Ears (BBC Radio 3)

Has anyone else begun to suspect that The Archers’ scriptwriters have been taken off Prozac? Maybe it’s something to do with the recent bad publicity about the drug, or perhaps the Pebble Mill Health Trust has been given new guidelines on pill dispensation. Whatever the reason, harsh reality has taken over from ‘everyday life’ in the fictional world of Ambridge, and we were confronted with not one but two disturbing storylines that have now begun to unravel with the heart-lurching inevitability of real life. Not once, but twice on successive evenings last week I found myself weeping over a bubbling saucepan. At Willow Farm, Mike Tucker worried away about his daughter-in-law Hayley as she went into premature labour; while over at Home Farm Jenny has at last been forced to admit that wicked old Brian really doesn’t have a heart. Traumatic stuff.

It’s weird how in Soapland characters transmogrify through the years into something quite different from how they began. I remember Mike Tucker as a chippy, cantankerous tenant farmer, always blaming life for mistakes that were in fact his own, and prone to bouts of drink-fuelled rage. But now he’s suddenly become a caring, sharing pater familias, light on his dancing feet but deep in his feelings. It’s a bit unnerving to find yourself crying not so much for Hayley but for this new, soft-centred Mike.

It wasn’t just that we were confronted by two dramatic storylines in one episode, with no pantomime rehearsals, no gossip, not even a silly stunt from Eddie Grundy as comic relief. The writers also forced upon us every bit of Hayley’s panic and pain. ‘What’s the time, Roy?’ she asks the baby’s father, between screeches. ‘Almost ten minutes since you last asked. Why? What’s the matter?’ says Roy in reply.

Next minute we were following them through the doors into Borsetshire General where another Soapland rule was broken — the introduction of an alien character, a different voice, a non-dom. The Consultant. Such brief intrusions of reality always jar, unnerve, confuse, and sound really phoney. Weirder still, he spent what seemed like ages with Hayley and Roy, offering them reassurance as well as diagnosis. And he turned up to see them within five minutes. In an NHS hospital. In 2008. Only on The Archers. If this was meant to be a bit of radio- verité, designed to attract a New Wave of listeners, it sounded really odd. Like sticking an episode from Casualty into a film by Godard.

More articles from: Kate Chisholm | this section

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