No more gritty dramas! At last, Ambridge is going back to its rural roots

How cheering to learn that the new editor of

The Archers is set to return the long-running drama and much-loved cultural institution to its roots as an everyday story of farming folk.

For too long now, it has been more like Eastenders in a field. Hit-and-runs, punchups in the pub car park, drug dealing and fraud.

Some plots have been so outlandishly gritty as to be just one sawn-off shotgun away from a Jason Statham cameo.

And while I was gripped, along with the rest of the country, by Helen and Rob’s immersive domestic violence storyline in 2016, that’s quite enough Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Balers excitement for a decade, thank you.

I want to hear more about the things that really matter, such as Brian’s toxic dump (nothing to do with Jennifer’s venison casserole, boom boom), Susan’s goat milk kefir, and the fortunes of Scruff Gin.

We can get real life anywhere we look, especially on ITV2 – but for us urbanites,

The Archers has always been a lovely 7pm oasis, or should I say a flower-strewn herbal ley, somewhere to while away a few moments in contemplation, far from the clamour of the madding crowd and the kids’ bedtime routine.

I’m surely not alone in caring considerably more

about Pip and Ruth’s forthcoming trip to see the Australian-style, open-sided milking parlour than Adam and Ian’s surrogate baby with Lexi, Roy’s Bulgarian girlfriend?

Ah yes, there’s a Bulgarian in Ambridge now, if you haven’t been tuning in as assiduously as you should. Even Borsetshire’s had to adapt to modernities such as mobile phones and multiculturalism.

Although, having said that, now Kate’s daughter Noluthando has gone back to South Africa, it’s looking suspiciously like the parish council is operating a one-in, one-out policy. But we’ll leave that incendiary debate for another day.

Because, let’s face it, since the very first pilot episode in 1950, The Archers was never intended to be the Moral Maze, nor is The Bull supposed to be the Queen Vic.

Ambridge is a place of natural justice and seasonal rhythms, where outside events are refracted through a pastoral prism, but must never get higher billing than the Flower and Produce Show. New editor, please take note.