- by Owen Morton
I’ll start this off by pointing out that I don’t have too much knowledge of the Archers, so perhaps I’m not the best person to judge. However, I have had more exposure to the Archers than any sane person should, so my analysis of the big question – up there in pink – will quite possibly merely turn into an unfocused rant on the various reasons why I dislike the Archers.
One of these reasons – and I think it’s a very important reason – is that it is deathly dull. One of the very first episodes of this radio programme I heard began with the announcer saying (this is not a joke), “And now it’s time for the Archers, where Alice is spreading jam on the tablecloth.” Even at my tender age, which I would guess was about 6, I thought that the programme must be extremely boring if the cliffhanger of an episode was someone spreading jam on the tablecloth. I mean, it’s not exactly tragedy, is it? A tablecloth can be cleaned. Admittedly, if this Alice person was over 4 years of age, then it might be slightly more important, as it would suggest mental problems on Alice’s part. But Alice was revealed to be a stupid child, or at least someone who sounded very much like a stupid child (which is another problem with the Archers – you can’t see the action unfurling, which is a bit unfortunate if something like a car accident were to occur: all you’d hear was a squeal of tyres and an explosion, and be left wondering what the hell was happening), so there was no luck on this point.
That was a rather rambling paragraph, I’ll admit, so, to summarise: the regular lives of the Archers are almost entirely mundane. Listening to the Archers is akin to just listening to people go about their normal lives. Soap operas are intended to be more dramatic. On Coronation Street – a programme which I do not watch, I must point out – there always seems to be something exciting happening, like Toyah visiting male strip clubs and being unduly influenced by what she sees and then going about pulling the trousers of her friends back in the street, for example, or Norris stealing Derek’s garden gnomes and sending postcards to Derek ostensibly from the gnomes, or what have you. But on the Archers, nothing ever happens. I have listened to perhaps fifty episodes in my life, I would guess, and in pretty much all of them, the most exciting thing to occur is two of them going to get some coffee. In the episode I listened to about two weeks ago, this enthralling situation was given an extra twist by one of the characters feeling too sick to have some cake with her coffee! The suspense! The drama!
That was a rather rambling paragraph as well, but I don’t really care anymore. Basically, what I’ve been trying to put across is that the Archers doesn’t have much in the way of real problems for its characters to sort out, as far as I can tell. And sometimes it gets stupid. In the same episode that I was discussing a minute ago, three characters (one of whom I believe was called Peter) were collaborating on a money-making scheme. This turned out to be something like ferret-racing. And moreover, they were arguing about it as if they really meant it, and the one who I think was called Peter was skiving off work to help his friends on this ridiculous project. Just plain stupid. Give me Buffy any day – at least that doesn’t make any pretences towards being sensible.
But I implied, in my title, that the Archers might be something more than a deathly dull radio programme, and might, in fact, be an organ for dangerous capitalistic thought which seeks to indoctrinate its listeners with individualistic and anti-communist ideas. Consider, firstly, the prime motivation of Peter and co. in their ferret-racing venture: profit. Granted, they are completely inept, but that doesn’t change their intentions.
Secondly, the theme music. It seems to have escaped everybody’s attention that this in itself is the tune to various capitalistic ditties that I have just made up. For example, these words can be sung to the theme tune:
We all hate the commie dogs,
We all hate them so much,
We all hate the commie dogs,
They lack the human touch.
It’s a clear indication of the prime motivation behind the programme’s authors, isn’t it? He/she/it must have gone to the BBC’s music department and said, “Give me the most rabid anti-communist music you can.” Detractors of this theory may point out that the words,
Magic bishop drops are nice,
But they’re also heavy,
So keep all the frogs you can,
‘Til they drop the levy.
can also be sung to the Archers’ theme tune, but – besides the fact that it doesn’t scan very well – this is clearly a load of old gibberish and has nothing to do with the fiercely anti-communist flavour of the Archers’ theme music.
Add to this incontrovertible evidence the fact that the Archers first aired during the McCarthy era, when communists were being hunted down like dogs in America and Britain. Even if it had been the writers’ original intention to have the Archers a programme about the revolutionaries of Ambridge, things would soon have changed when they realised they’d most likely be locked up. Sometimes principles have to be changed for pragmatic reasons.
But my most damning evidence for the Archers being a capitalist venture (another capitalist Venture I know is Jonathan Barker – he’s a Venture Scout and he hates communism) is the newsletter they send out. I am ashamed to admit that my dear mother is a member of that evil organisation, the Archers Addicts Club, and so said club sends a newsletter to our house every so often. This newsletter is nothing more than the opportunity for the members of the club to spend more money, on assorted pieces of Archers-related rubbish. Such items include (and this isn’t a joke either) a reworking of the Bayeux Tapestry to suit the Archers. What this consists of, I can’t begin to imagine: Alice spreading jam on the tablecloth instead of William shooting Harold in the eye? Other items up for sale include wooden spoons with motifs like “Stir up memories of Archers” on them, a map of Ambridge and the surrounding area, Archers dressing gowns, Archers rugby shirts, Archers T-shirts and Archers boxing shorts. The point I’m making is that various sad people around the country paid good money to be in a club which did nothing for them except send them regular opportunities to spend more money. And these people do just that! If that’s not successful capitalism, I don’t know what is.
So there you go. My perhaps inconclusive argument for why the Archers is an evil, anti-communist programme. How pleased I am with it.