I was once a fan of The Archers, to the extent that the Guardian quoted me in 2007 outlining how ‘an unlikely combination of support from the Queen and Julie Burchill led to the transformation of Britain’s ‘everyday story of country folk’ from a dull and tired format to its present cult status.’ Apparently I wrote that ‘No longer are the women of Ambridge stuck with ‘the gallons of greengage jam that the old-guard male scriptwriters kept them occupied with for over 20 years.’
The BBC seems determined to educate listeners whom they think are ignorant
Look, I know I was taking a lot of drugs back then and my judgement wasn’t the best; witness the pair of jokers I’d been married to already! But of all the wacky attitudes I’ve held during my long, loony life (Tom Robinson was the best thing to come put of punk, I once crazily opined in print way back in the 1970s – again, I’m blaming the drugs), the idea of The Archers as some kind of feminist vanguard vehicle has to be one of the wackiest. Thankfully, I’ve since come to my senses.
After a couple of decades of being a perfectly good soap opera, like every other serial drama, whether on radio or TV, from the BBC or ITV, listening to The Archers on Radio 4 has come to feel like sitting in a doctor’s waiting room without a book, when you’re forced to plough through public-health pamphlets telling you how to think about everything, from breakfast to Brexit. But the storylines of the last few months show just how far The Archers has fallen.
These days you’d swear that there was a mandatory number of mentions of ‘climate change’; a teenager from the Malik family, who joined the show in 2023, has joined the local clandestine ‘re-wilding’ group, showing all the enthusiasm for contraband beavers that young men usually reserve for the teachings of Andrew Tate. I’ve limited myself to a monthly ‘hate-listen’ ever since the strangely mute ‘Xander’ – the test-tube offspring of resident Lovely Gay Couple Adam and Ian – was ‘birthed’ by a Bulgarian fruit-picker whose womb was hired by the hour by the pair. I’m just waiting for ten-year-old Henry to say he’s trans and we’ll have a full bingo card.
But there’s certainly no absence of Islam in Borsetshire. Young tearaway George Grundy is currently languishing at Her Maj’s Pleasure. If he converts to Islam behind bars he won’t be the first to do so. Tellingly, an EastEnders character, Bobby Beale, did this back in 2019, while serving a sentence for killing his ‘wayward’ sister. It was a bit on the nose, which I’m sure the BBC didn’t intend, though here was BBC Sunday Morning Live to make nice:
‘This week saw EastEnders character Bobby Beale begin his conversion to Islam, with the faith set to have a positive impact on his life. The storyline comes at a time when the media’s treatment of Muslims is in the spotlight, with analysis from the Muslim Council of Britain suggesting that the faith is often portrayed negatively in some media, which may be leading to Islamophobia.’
There’s also a somewhat saintly family of Muslims in ITV’s Coronation Street; ironically, Marc Anwar, the actor who played the family’s patriarch, Sharif Nazir, was sacked for making racially offensive comments about Indians on social media.
Back in Ambridge, meanwhile, the storylines about religion are getting a bit much. Lynda Snell has made the decision to start fasting for Ramadan out of respect for her Muslim lodgers. The bum-sucking, supplicating dialogue put into Snell’s mouth was perhaps the state broadcaster’s most sickening, self-immolating demonstration yet of the BBC’s capture by and capitulation to Islam; it was right up there with Sainsbury’s as highlighted by Melanie McDonagh in this week’s Spectator. The supermarket recently asked its customers ‘Are you Ramadan-ready?’ in an advert for its range of fast-breaking foods. As McDonagh pointed out:
‘Ramadan, which starts this week, is now very much part of the calendar, much more than, say, Diwali. For the third year there will be a switch-on of the Ramadan Lights in London – previously on Oxford Street, this year in Coventry Street, where the message will be ‘Happy Ramadan’ until it changes to ‘Happy Eid’.’
Do these people forget that most people in Britain aren’t Muslim? Anyway, Snell, who started out as a Hyacinth-Bucket-type New Money grotesque, appears to share this desire to suck up to minorities. Her character, very much a Lady Muck, must be one of the most annoying on the show. These days she has become far more ‘human’, if that is the word for a grovelling, guilt-ridden gutless wonder who spends an unusual amount of time worrying about being ‘the R-word’. I’m sure that this facet of her character isn’t the wretched writers’ intention – they’re not that suss or subtle – but this new version of Snell illustrates the idea of ‘luxury beliefs’: the term coined by social commentator Rob Henderson to describe the modern trend among the well off to use their beliefs as a way to display their social status.
There had been racism in The Archers before, when Roy Tucker was involved in a series of attacks back in the 1990s on the young lawyer Usha Gupta (since married to a vicar). But it was well-handled, with Roy shown the error of his ways, a sincere apology made and handshakes all round. There were no lectures or re-education back then. Was that because Usha is a Hindu, rather than a Muslim? The presentation of another family, the Gills, certainly suggests that the writers are more relaxed about the way that non-Muslims are presented. The Gills are shown as flash New Money, who bought up a swanky Archer-family home and now leave it unoccupied while they flit around the fleshpots of the infidel world. It’s a world away from their depiction of the Malik family, not least practicing Muslim mum Azra, whom the BBC describes as a ‘no-nonsense local GP’.
Perhaps the most unlikely and comic aspect of the arrival of a Muslim family in town is that it’s become part of Radio 4’s ongoing ridic and ‘beggy’ (as the youngsters say) attempt to appeal to young people or right-on oldies. One sub-plot could be summed up as: ‘Isn’t Chelsea a slag? It’s no wonder she got herself knocked up. If only she were modest and chaste like that good Muslim girl, Zainab, who doesn’t go on these awful immoral dates.’
Once again, the BBC seems determined to educate listeners whom they think are ignorant. But in doing so, they simply reveal their own ignorance; about what young people want to listen to, and about what a soap like The Archers should be about. The programme’s shift from being an everyday story of country folk to a totally fantastical story of everyday Woke folk is complete.
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