The Archers

This entry is about the radio series; for other meanings, see The Archers (disambiguation).

The Archers

File:The Archers podcast picture.jpg The podcast picture of the soap
Genre	Soap Opera
Running time	15 minutes, later 12½ minutes
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
Home station	BBC Light Programme, later BBC Home Service, now BBC Radio 4
Created by	Godfrey Baseley
Original release	1 January 1951 (Pilot on Whit Monday 1950)
No. of episodes	15,360 (As of 1 January 2008)
Opening theme	Barwick Green
Website	Archers homepage
Podcast	The Archers podcast

The Archers is a British radio soap opera broadcast on the BBC's main speech (as opposed to music) channel, Radio 4. It is the world's longest running radio soap with more than 15,000 episodes having been broadcast, and was originally billed as an "everyday story of country folk". Despite its rural flavour, it is in fact recorded in the heart of Birmingham, the UK's second largest city. The Archers is the most listened to Radio 4 non-news programme, and holds the BBC Radio programme record for the number of times listened to over the internet, with over one million listeners.

Outline

The Archers is set in the fictional village of Ambridge in the fictional county of Borsetshire, in the real Midlands of England. Borsetshire is situated between the (in reality, contiguous) counties of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, south of Birmingham in the West Midlands. Ambridge itself is sometimes said to be based upon the village of Inkberrow in Worcestershire, where the village pub, The Old Bull, was the model for The Bull in Ambridge.

Other fictional local villages include Penny Hassett, Loxley Barrett, Darrington, Hollerton, Edgeley, Waterley Cross and Lakey Green. The county town of Borsetshire is Borchester, and the nearest big city is the cathedral city of Felpersham. Anywhere further away from Ambridge may be referred to humorously with comments such as 'that's on the other side of Felpersham!', but characters do occasionally venture further: several attended the Countryside Alliance march in London, there have been references to the gay scene in Manchester's Canal Street, and a number of scenes have taken place abroad. Birmingham is a favourite destination for a shopping trip.

There are six episodes a week running from Sunday to Friday. All except the Friday evening episode are re-broadcast the following day, and all of the week's episodes are re-run as a Sunday morning omnibus.

Characters

Main article: List of characters in The Archers

Many of the storylines concern the title characters, the middle-class Archer family who own and manage Brookfield Farm. The farm has been passed down the generations from the original owner Dan (now deceased) to his son Phil, currently the oldest surviving Archer, and is now co-owned by three of Phil's four children: David (who manages it with his wife Ruth), Elizabeth and Kenton. As well as other Archers families and offspring, the other main families include:

• the prosperous Aldridges, portrayed as money-driven practitioners of agribusiness. Brian, the head of the family, is a serial adulterer,
• the rich and elderly Woolleys, with Jack now badly affected by Alzheimer's disease,
• the Grundys, formerly struggling tenant farmers who were previously portrayed comically and disapprovingly, but are now seen as doggedly battling adversity,
• the urban, nouveau riche "incomers": pretentious and domineering, Lynda Snell is the butt of many jokes, although her sheer energy makes her a stalwart of village life. She is partnered by the long-suffering Robert,
• the perpetually struggling (and complaining) Carters,
• the widower milkman and casual farm labourer Mike Tucker who battles, sometimes successfully, with depression.

Many plots involve the teen and twenties offspring of these families, so new nuclear families come into existence over time. Other distant relatives also reappear from time to time. Some characters are very well known, but never heard on air. Over the years, some silent characters become "real", or vice-versa (for example, Mrs. Antrobus, "the Dog Woman").

Actors

Unlike television soaps, Archers actors are not held on retainers, so most do other acting work and can disappear for periods if they are working on long term projects such as films or television series. One example is the actress Tamsin Greig who plays Debbie Aldridge. Greig, who is now arguably the most famous actor in The Archers, has become well known for her appearances on television comedy shows such as Green Wing and Black Books. As a result, Debbie manages a farm in Hungary in which her family has an interest whilst she is filming these shows, and then returns again to Ambridge when her commitments allow. Because of this, and by the nature of the storylines focussing on particular groups of characters, in any given week the series comprises 20–30 speaking characters out of a regular cast of about 60. Greig now has competition from young actress Felicity Jones who plays Emma Carter in the series; Jones, after a period studying at Wadham College Oxford has moved into large TV parts, such as the new ITV series Northanger Abbey, in which she starred.

History

Starting on Whit Monday 1950, and continuing with five episodes through that week, a pilot series created by Godfrey Baseley was broadcast to the English Midlands, as 'a farming Dick Barton'; it was decided to commission the series for a longer national run. (In the pilot series the Archers' farm was not called Brookfield but 'Wimberton Farm'.)

Since 1 January 1951, a fifteen-minute episode (since 1998, twelve minutes) has been transmitted across the UK each weekday, at first on the BBC Light Programme and subsequently on the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4). The original scriptwriters were Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason, who were also working on the series Dick Barton - Special Agent whose popularity partly inspired The Archers and whose slot in the schedules it eventually took over. Originally produced with collaborative input from the Ministry of Agriculture, The Archers was conceived as a means of disseminating information to farmers and smallholders to help increase productivity in the post-World War II years of rationing and food shortages. The programme was hugely successful; at the height of its popularity it was estimated that 60% of adult Britons were regular listeners. It was used as a propaganda vehicle to reinforce notions of Englishness, and to foster and inculcate notions of rebuilding in post-war Britain. The programme's educational remit, and the involvement of the government, ended in 1972 but some long-term listeners still refer to "the Min. of Ag. bit" and it is true that the dialogue often contains more references to European farming subsidies, the buying habits of large supermarkets and the difficulties of marketing organic meat, than is usual in everyday conversation.

The actor Norman Painting has played the character of Phil Archer continuously ever since the first trial series in 1950. As a script writer, his first episode was the one in which Phil's first wife, Grace, was killed in a fire on the launch day of ITV. Painting was allowed to make a change to the initial script of the episode, and subsequently went on to write around 1,200 complete episodes, credited as "Bruno Milna", culminating in the 10,000th episode.

Killing off Grace Archer on the 22 September 1955 was widely seen as a "spoiler" by the BBC; the cast had realised something was going on when the decision was made to record the episodes in London rather than Birmingham, and the episode was broadcast on the night of ITV's debut. The emotional response of listeners to news of Grace's death overshadowed the debut of the new competitive television network, and also inspired an episode of the television comedy programme Hancock (1961) that featured a fictional soap, The Bowmans, parodying the series. On the 50th anniversary of ITV's launch, Ysanne Churchman, the actress who played Grace, sent a congratulatory card to ITV, signed "Grace Archer".

Tony Shryane MBE was the programme's producer from 1st January 1951 to 19th January 1979.

Vanessa Whitburn has been the programme's editor since 1992.

According to Who's Who in The Archers 2008, episode 15,360 was to be broadcast on 1 January 2008. Episode 15,000 was broadcast on 7 November 2006.

Since 2007, it has been available as a podcast. It is (as of 14 November 2007) the fifteenth most popular podcast on iTunes in the United Kingdom.

Themes

A recurring theme over the years has been the resentment of the working-class Grundy family towards the middle-class Archers. Labour politician Neil Kinnock in the 1980s jokingly referred to The Archers as "The Grundys and their Oppressors". The series, however, now deals with a wide range of contemporary issues including illicit affairs, drug abuse, rape, and gay marriage - inviting criticism from conservative commentators such as Peter Hitchens that the series has become a vehicle for liberal and left-wing values and agendas, with characters behaving out of character to achieve those goals. However, one of the show's enduring charms is its ability to make absorbing stories out of everyday, small scale concerns, such as the possible closure of the village shop, the loss and subsequent rediscovery of a pair of spectacles, competitive marmalade-making, or utter nonsense such as a 'spiletroshing' competition, rather than the large-scale and rather improbable events that form the plots of many soap operas.

Sometimes mocked as a comfortable middle-class series with stereotypical comic yokels, the programme has nonetheless tackled many serious social issues. There have been, for instance: rural drug addiction; inter-racial relationships; direct action against GM crops; family break-ups; and civil partnerships (gay marriage). Thus, given the (allegedly) middle-class nature of the Archers audience (and the generally unsympathetic treatment of characters such as Sid Perks, the adulterous pub landlord, who nevertheless has forcibly expressed views on the superiority of those aspects of "traditional morality" which suit him), the Archers may be seen as a counterpoise to the uniformly differently inclined lower-middle-class British newspapers. For instance, it seems likely that the intense discussion both in Ambridge and the "real world" about whether the term "wedding" is appropriate for a civil partnership will make the use of the term much more frequent, and perhaps even more acceptable, in Middle England.

Main characters

Main article: List of characters in The Archers

A list of all Archers characters, and the actors who played them, can be found here, although the list ends in 1997. The credits which follow are not necessarily complete; actors who played the characters as children have not always been included. This is a link to an Archers family tree

Theme tune

The Archers' widely recognised theme tune is called Barwick Green. It is a "maypole dance" from the suite My Native Heath, written in 1924 by the Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood.

A rather more up-beat version of the tune, played by The Yetties, is used to introduce the Sunday omnibus edition.

Robert Robinson once compared the tune to 'the genteel abandon of a lifelong teetotaller who has suddenly taken to drink'.

In 2004 both The Independent [1] and The Today Programme [2] claimed (as April Fool's Day jokes) that Brian Eno had crafted an electronic remix of the theme tune to replace the old theme.

Fan clubs

Two organisations dedicated to the programme were established in the 1990s. Archers Addicts is the official body, run by members of the cast. Archers Anarchists was formed around the same time, objecting to the "castist" assumptions propagated by the BBC, and claiming that the characters are real.

Overseas parallels

In 1994, the BBC World Service in Afghanistan began broadcasting Naway Kor, Naway Jwand ("New Home, New Life"), an everyday story of countryfolk with built-in bits of useful information. Although the useful information was more likely to concern unexploded landmines and opium addiction than the latest modern farming techniques, the inspiration and model of Naway Kor, Naway Jwand was The Archers, and the initial workshopping with Afghan writers included an Archers scriptwriter. A 1997 study found that listeners to the soap opera were significantly less likely to be injured by a mine than non-listeners.

In Rwanda, the BBC World Service's Kinyarwanda-Kirundi service has been broadcasting the Archers-inspired soap opera Urunana since 1999.

The Archers was also the model for the Russian radio soap opera Dom 7, Podyezd 4 ("House 7, Entrance 4") – on which the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, once made a cameo appearance.

Books and audiobooks

Reference works

The most recent Archers reference books are Who's Who in The Archers by Keri Davies, senior producer and scriptwriter. This has been published by BBC Books since 2003 and is updated annually for the Christmas gift-giving season.

• Who's Who in The Archers 2008 by Keri Davies. ISBN 184607326X
• The Archers Encyclopeadia (2001) by Joanna Toye and Adrian Flynn. ISBN 0563537183
• The Book of The Archers (1994) by Patricia Greene, Charles Collingwood and Hedli Niklaus. ISBN 071813849X

Novelisations

• The Ambridge Chronicles by Joanna Toye
  • The Archers 1951-1967: Family Ties (1998). ISBN 0563383976
  • The Archers 1968-1986: Looking For Love (1999). ISBN 0563551259
  • The Archers 1987-2000: Back to the Land (2000). ISBN 0563537019
  • The Archers 1951-1967: Family Ties (1998. Audiobook, narrated by Miriam Margolyes). ISBN 0563557141
  • The Archers 1968-1986: Looking For Love (1999. Audiobook, narrated by Stella Gonet). ISBN 056355813X
  • The Archers 1987-2000: Back to the Land (2000. Audiobook, narrated by Stephanie Cole). ISBN 0563558180
• The Archers by Jock Gallagher
  • The Archers: To The Victor The Spoils (1988). ISBN 0563205997
  • The Archers: Return to Ambridge (1988). ISBN 0563206063
  • The Archers: Borchester Echoes (1988). ISBN 0563206071
  • The Archers: Omnibus Edition (1988). ISBN 0563360011

Published audio episodes

• Ambridge Affairs
  • Ambridge Affairs: Love Triangles (2007). ISBN 9781-405-67733-2
  • Ambridge Affairs: Heartache at Home Farm (2007). ISBN 9781-405-68785-0
• Vintage Archers
  • Vintage Archers: Volume 1 (1988). ISBN 0563225866
  • Vintage Archers: Volume 2 (1988). ISBN 0563227044
  • Vintage Archers: Volume 3 (1998). ISBN 0563557400
  • Vintage Archers: Volumes 1-3 (2001). ISBN 0563382813

Cameo appearances

Many famous people have made cameo appearances on the programme.

• In 1984 Princess Margaret and the Duke of Westminster, in connection with a fashion show to commemorate the centenary of the NSPCC.
• In 1989, for the 10,000th episode, Dame Judi Dench made an appearance as Pru Forrest. Terry Wogan was also featured and Esther Rantzen was responsible for the spot effects.
• In 1991 radio presenter John Peel appeared as himself.
• In June 2004 radio presenter Chris Moyles appeared as a random customer - and suspected National Pub of the Year judge - in The Bull.
• On 22 September 2006 Zandra Rhodes played herself in an episode, also connected to a fashion show.
• Others who have made appearances include Britt Ekland, Humphrey Lyttelton (1956), Griff Rhys Jones, Anneka Rice, Dame Edna Everage, Stephen Fry, and Alan Titchmarsh.
• Robert Winston appeared as a fertility specialist consulted by Hayley and Roy Tucker on January 2 2007 and February 7 2007.
• Mike Gatting appeared as himself on September 9 2007 at the centre of a misunderstanding between Sid and Jolene Perks during the npower Village Cup final at Lord's cricket ground.

The Archers in popular culture

• Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter's fictional detective, was a fan of The Archers.
• In The Goon Show episode The Spanish Suitcase from 1954, the studio audience is heard running from the room as the show is announced. However, the Goons lure them back by playing "emergency music": the theme tune from The Archers. The Goons then act out a short parody of the series, ending with writer Spike Milligan proclaiming: "Easy money!"
• In 1961, Galton and Simpson parodied The Archers in an episode of Hancock's Half Hour entitled "The Bowmans".
• A sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie entitled Hard Man's Record, which saw the first appearance of the character Alan, mentions that Alan had "a short spell as Nigel Pargetter in The Archers", claiming that, "Someone had to do it."
• Jeremy Clarkson in his anthology of articles, Clarkson on Cars, lambasts The Archers by describing them as "...living in a farm-subsidised world and thinking postage stamps are amazing...."
• A special episode of Arena, broadcast on BBC Four on 1 January 2007, focused on The Archers. It was narrated by Stephen Fry and included interviews with current actors and scriptwriters.

Trivia

• Current stock holdings of the main farms are available at the following links: Brookfield, Home Farm, and Bridge Farm
• The Archers, whilst being the longest running soap opera on radio, is not the longest in the world. The American soap opera Guiding Light has had 10 more episodes, and started on radio in January 25 1937, before moving to television in June 30 1952.
• Purported maps of Ambridge and Borsetshire have been published.

External links

• Official website - home of the BBC Archers message board sometimes called Mustardland because of its distinctive background colour
• Archers Addicts - BBC-approved fan club

• Archers Anarchists - "anti-castist" BBC-free fan club
• Saddicts Archers Chat Forum - Independent chat site for the discerning listener
• Mustardland - intended as an alternative to the official message-board.
• The Archers Plot Summaries - missed an episode? This site will bring you up to date with a summary of each day's events. (Pre-1995 events are summarised in Peter Hesketh's Chronology)
• uk.media.radio.archers The Archers newsgroup (also available via Google Groups)
• The uk.media.radio.archers FAQ The Archers newsgroup wiki.