Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Jose Sarmento Matos/Washington Post.
Members of The Archers crew — from left, Vanessa Nuttall, Kim Greengrass, Tim Bentinck and Sunny Ormonde — during rehearsals in a BBC studio in Birmingham, England, on Jan. 13.

Radio will never die. As often as people predict it won’t be able to compete with whatever the new thing is, it reinvents itself. Plus, as today’s story shows, there are old-time triumphs that manage to evolve and stay the same.

Steve Hendrix writes at the Washington Post in January, “Something bad — or harrowing or heartwarming — is always about to happen on The Archers, a preposterously popular daily BBC radio soap opera that marks its 75th anniversary this month. People fall off roofs, roofs fall on people, tractors overturn, young women get pregnant (sometimes by accident) and young men get married (sometimes to other men).

“There are stabbings and affairs and bar fights and barn burnings. But there are also pie contests, cow milkings, pints at the pub, and lots and lots of tea around kitchen tables ,,, in the fictional farm village of Ambridge, somewhere in anywhere Middle England. And for three-quarters of a century, Britain has been hanging on every twist.

“The Archers, recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-running serial drama on the planet … endures as a real-time chronicle of ever-evolving, never-changing modern Britain.

“ ‘It’s part of the fabric of our national life,’ said Sybil Ruscoe, a former BBC agriculture reporter who grew up listening to The Archers in Shropshire and joined the show four years ago as its farming and countryside adviser. ‘It’s universal human drama that takes place in a rural setting, with the hedgerows, the horses, the wellies, the thermal vests.’

“All the pastoral pathos makes the BBC Radio 4 production a surprisingly enduring star in the broadcaster’s vast lineup, attracting more than 5 million weekly listeners on the air and hovering routinely at or near the top of shows streamed on the BBC Sounds app. (Listeners outside the U.K. can find it on BBC.com.)

“Cliff-hanger episodes still become national happenings, with media coverage and mentions in Parliament, as in 2016 when a verdict was reached in the case of organic cheesemaker Helen Archer, on trial for plunging a knife into her psychologically abusive husband.

“The legions who listened on smart speakers to that nail-biter may be nothing like the 20 million (about 40 percent of the United Kingdom’s population) who were glued to their Philcos in 1955 when newlywed Grace Archer was killed in a stable fire, but it is still a striking level of relevance for a Churchill-era radio drama. …

“[Emma Freud, a British journalist and commentator] ticked off the show’s topical march from rationing in the 1950s to unwed mothers in the 1960s and onward to sperm donors, gay marriage, modern slavery, domestic violence and immigration — societal shifts that never stop churning. …

“The mix has created a diverse and devoted fan base, populating countless Facebook groups, subreddits and message boards. Ian McKellen is known to be a listener, as is Stephen Fry. Judi Dench appeared on the 10,000th episode, and when Queen Camilla hosted a party for the show, she dazzled the cast and crew with her encyclopedic command of Archer-cana.

“ ‘She could be one of our continuity researchers,’ Jeremy Howe, the show’s senior editor, said.

“That a horsey-set royal would follow along may be less surprising than the number of young Britons (along with Americans, Romanians and Russians) checking in on Ambridge at 7 o’clock, six evenings a week. … The Archers is one of the BBC’s most popular downloads by 18-to-35-year-olds.

” ‘It’s stunning the people I meet who listen to this program,’ Ruscoe said. ‘And every single one of them has an opinion to share.’

“Physical Ambridge, such as it is, exists in a cluttered suite of rooms the size of a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Birmingham. Eight days a month, actors, producers and sound effects wizards gather in this dedicated BBC studio piled with all the objects that fill the fictional county of Borsetshire with noise: ironing boards as rusty gates, portable doors and windows that slam, a staircase to nowhere equipped with metal, carpet and wood treads. There’s a full kitchen with running water, a classic AGA stove, and lots of cups and cutlery for clinking on cue.

” ‘A live room,’ the most open space with the least soundproofing, suffices for any capacious setting, such as a church or village hall or the Bull, the Ambridge pub and social hub. An adjacent ‘dead room’ is lined with foam panels playing, ironically, the great outdoors, with birdsong and traffic and the ineffable whoosh of open sky layered on digitally as scenes are recorded.”

What a fun article! Do you have a favorite soap opera?

More at the Post, here.