Some are much more bold and ambitious than I think we would normally give them credit for. I hope followers of Ambridge find this new format as enjoyable to listen to as I have found it interesting to write. Five generations on from the original Mr and Mrs Dan and Doris Archer, there has been more change to The Archers in the last seven weeks than in the last seven decades.
However, there is one element that remains steadfast. Not even a pandemic would stop that. The Archers. Main content. Changing the world's longest running drama: How The Archers is continuing despite the coronavirus pandemic. We hope our return to Ambridge will offer a respite from the difficult realities of these strange times. It has shattered the utopian community. At the same time, the well-established online debates around the programme have intensified, both in their vehemence and in the creativity of the contributions.
They also mobilise the politics of gender in the way that victim-blaming and misogyny have emerged alongside feminist analyses and overwhelming support for domestic violence charities. The problems of Ambridge can no longer be solved by a piece of lemon drizzle cake or a casserole and, for the listeners, the challenges of the drama and the associated online performance of middle-class cultural capital make for an engaging, but certainly not a comforting, experience.
So far the story has attracted new listeners and the faithful fans have turned to social media to calm their shattered nerves. It remains to be seen how the more traditional aspects of the programme can be combined with the courtroom drama that lies ahead — and whether Helen can become as resilient and inspiring as many real-life survivors of abuse.
The Archers to air classic episodes amid coronavirus delays The Radio 4 drama is delving into its archives as production slows. The Archers outlines changes amid coronavirus pandemic The long-running BBC Radio 4 drama will be airing less episodes per week and will feature fewer characters per episode. What impact has coronavirus had on The Archers? The radio series is the world's longest-running drama - but has it been affected by the pandemic? Archers actor Ted Kelsey dies aged 88 Kelsey was well loved for playing Joe Grundy on the BBC Radio 4 soap for more than three decades - and also voiced characters in children's animated favourite Danger Mouse.
Walford welcomes a familiar face - and voice - as rape trial begins. The Archers actress Sara Coward dies aged 69 The woman known to millions as the Radio 4 drama's Caroline Sterling has passed away after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. The Archers and Countryfile allow city-dwellers to indulge their bucolic fantasies Country television lets us enjoy the great outdoors — without going anywhere near a field.
It was like a real family. He listens to the show, too, at home in his own Worcestershire village. A nd yet, of course, The Archers is not real. It is the result of a brilliantly fabricated illusion.
Sustaining the illusion of The Archers is the result of a relentless production line. The Archers is created in interlocking five-week cycles, or blocks. This details the direction of the show, family by family, farm by farm, over the whole cycle. The work of the meeting is to decide how to transform this prose outline into drama. Five out of the 12 writers on the team are assigned to write a week of scripts each.
After producing a scene-by-scene synopsis, each writer has two weeks to produce a first draft of their normally six episodes. You also had to use each character at least twice. But it was a fantastic discipline; it enforced a structure that really worked. After the second and final drafts of the scripts are signed off, they are recorded over 10 days. Since actors are holding scripts, the subtle art of the silent page turn must also be mastered.
As the scenes are recorded, a further, ghostly figure is present, performing a curious shadow-play alongside the actors. Vanessa Nuttall creates foley effects — added sounds that, alongside recorded material dropped in from a vast digital library, create the illusion of Ambridge. If the characters Harrison and Fallon are in bed together, for example, Nuttall will be in there with them, rustling their duvet. If Shula is out riding, Nuttall will be at her side, jangling a bridle. As an actor you are reading the script, watching the spot-effects person out of the corner of your eye, being aware of where the mic is and where your fellow actors are, and how all of that maps together.
Sometimes sound effects are created by the object itself — only a real Aga door closing can adequately communicate its particular solid clink, Nuttall told me. Piles of old half-inch magnetic tape become undergrowth or straw. An ancient ironing board, opened and closed, stands in for the farm gates.
Hands are squelched through a bowl of yoghurt when a lamb is born. When Helen Archer stabbed her husband, it was a knife through a watermelon, and when brothers Ed and William Grundy have one of their punch-ups, a spot-effects artist will be smashing the living daylights out of a cabbage.
The day the script required a canine character to eat crisps, Nutall gamely chomped, doglike, through a packet. She even dials a mobile phone when someone makes a call, convinced that however subtle the sound, every detail counts in creating the world of The Archers in the minds of its 5 million listeners. T ime itself is a character in The Archers. The story unspools at the pace of real life; its actors age with it, as do its listeners.
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