Is a woman who is tired of Ambridge tired of life?

Anyone who is not a long-term virtual resident of Borsetshire, and on nodding terms with the Bishop of Felpersham, may as well stop reading now. Only Archers’ aficionados can understand my plight.

It’s now near-terminal: a full six months since I stopped listening – and this is after twenty years of being able to count on the fingers of not many hands the number of episodes I had missed. I don’t mean omnibus editions, either: I really could have counted those on one hand. But some time last autumn, the compulsion to hurtle to the radio at 7.02 pm began to falter. Reader, it faltered, weakened, and appears about to die. Why?

Sure, I’d been profoundly irritated by the Greg tragedy – and not because any fool could see it coming miles off. I had been screaming at Helen to confiscate the key to the gun cupboard for months. Still, stolid predictability of plotline has always been part of the charm.

More to the point, given that I now fancy myself a tweeded-up, flat-capped member of the rural classes, I was narked by the (profoundly urban) characterisation of Greg (a gamekeeper and thus a uniformed upholder of blood sports) as a misogynistic, surly proto-psychopath. In fact almost any plotline dealing with huntin’ or shootin’ issues strikes me as wonky as a nine bob note. When a (packed) marquee at the Game Fair, couple of years back, resoundingly voted that The Archers does not accurately represent country life, I fear the voters were dead right.

But it was surely ever thus. No, I’ve a feeling John Mortimer was on to something when he came out of the closet as a former Archers’ addict and announced he, too, was losing patience. It’s the soap-opera-isation of the serial, isn’t it? And if you’re about to tell me that the suicide, rape, anorexia, drug addiction, delinquency, fraud and such of recent times have always featured in the long & rich tradition of Archers derring-do, you’re wasting your breath. I perfectly well remember the armed raid on the village shop, and that Scottish fraudster who impregnated Lizzy (gave her a dodgy diamond bracelet what’s more) – along with a hundred other fabulously, ludicrously unlikely happenings in the lives of ordinary country folk. I never believed a word – but I never missed an episode.

So it isn’t credibility I’m moaning about – I think it’s likeability. Ambridge is no longer a comfortable place to sit down, have a cup of tea, and be soothed by a gentle burble of pseudo-rural inanities. It’s in-yer-face sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. Hell, it’s East Enders with a few cows.

Alternatively, it may be no coincidence that I turned fifty last October – just about the time I began to fall out of love with the Archers. Is it possible I transmogrified, instantly, into a Grumpy Old Woman?

(And don’t ask about the next book. Suffice to say that the Dead Novel Chest in the attic has been growing apace, I’m fiendishly short-tempered, my husband and even dogs are keeping a wary distance, and I’m working on it. Yup, grumpy old woman seems about to sum it up.)

  posted by Kate @ 3:51:00 PM