The truth about the sex lives of The Archers
As the Radio 4 soap stands accused of sexism, Dr Cara Courage explains why ‘Ambridge academics’ love to hate it
The Archers has always been a world of strong women and weak men. Peggy Woolley, still fighting the good fight in her 90s after burying two husbands; Jennifer Aldridge, her daughter, wife of serial adulterer Brian, who has lost the family home; and above all the saintly Jill Archer, the ultimate matriarch among flawed men. And little is changing in Radio 4’s “everyday story of country folk” as it approaches its 70th birthday.
The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock once made headlines by describing The Archers as the story of the political underclass – as in the downtrodden Grundy family and their overlords, the Archer/aldridge clan. But I would argue we can say something similar for the genders. It’s a story of resilient, determined, tenacious women having to deal with, for the most part, very feckless men.
It’s why Dr Nicola Headlam and I have written a new book, putting women at the centre of the longrunning soap. It asks: are these really women we recognise as ourselves? The answer is, not often enough. And yet five million of us still listen devotedly, while a Yougov poll named it Britian’s fifth most popular radio programme.
For me, it is a daily addiction. I grew up in a farming community on Exmoor, but hated The Archers back then – it was too close to home. It took me until my late 20s to tune in again, almost accidentally, a dozen or so years ago. Now I listen to the 13-minute episodes every evening when I get in from work, and again with the Sunday omnibus.
Perhaps it is nostalgia, though hardly rose-tinted. Like the women in The Archers who want to forge careers on their own terms, I too had to leave home and head for a big city, in my case to work as an academic at the University of Brighton and now as an arts manager at Tate Modern in London. Yes, there are some
economically independent women in Ambridge – Helen Archer with her organic cheese, Shula Hebden-lloyd (née Archer) with the stables, and Lilian “Pusscat” Bellamy (yet another Archer) with her rental properties – but all of them have a combination of family money and family support. The only self-made female entrepreneur in the village is a very recent arrival, Natasha, with her juice business.
Too little, too late? Of course. In terms of keeping up with the changes shaping women’s lives and careers, The Archers is undeniably a programme that falls short. The pilot episode might have aired on May 29 1950, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the programme had a woman among its scriptwriters. Her inclusion – and of others subsequently – helped reverse a potentially terminal fall in listener figures.
There have now been three women editors, a reflection of an audience that remains predominantly female. Research carried out a few years ago showed that white and educated women over 50 are in the majority, but more recent storylines – notably the well-publicised and much-discussed exploration of coercive control in the relationship between Helen Archer and Rob Titchener – have attracted a younger demographic.
Our book grew out of what was originally a debate on social media among Archers fans. A significant number were university lecturers and researchers and so, in 2016, the first gathering of “Academic Archers” took place in London. The speakers were all from higher education institutes, but the 100-strong audience was open to all. In that and two subsequent gatherings – the fourth takes place this weekend in Sheffield – the age range has been between 20 and 91, and 70 per cent female.
So why are women like me still so attached to a soap opera that doesn’t always accurately reflect our lives?
According to the Bechdel-wallace Test – a formula devised by academics to measure female participation, based on there being two women who talk to each other, but not about men – The Archers scores only 42 out of 100. Just a third of episodes that aired between February and June 2018 contained segments where women spoke for 30 seconds or longer on a subject other than men. That is not brilliant, though given that the men cause so many problems – think hapless Eddie Grundy – it is inevitable the women talk about them all the time.
Where The Archers’ scriptwriters do excel, is in making the listener sympathise with the situation its women find themselves in. Take the character of Shula: here is a woman in middle age, with empty nest syndrome since her son left home, and who is wondering: “What am I going to do with the next stage of my life?”
That has manifested itself in her divorce from dreary, gambling addict Alistair, the vet – curiously, the first time that the divorce process has been featured, rather than being something that happens off-air.
Emotionally, then, there is something very recognisable about Shula’s predicament, even if The Archers is once again behind the times in reflecting the true impact of divorce in many people’s lives. And there is even a hint from one of the producers, included in the book, that Shula might be heading for a same-sex relationship. That would be fantastic. There has been never been a regular lesbian character, while its depiction of the show’s one homosexual relationship, between Adam Macy and Ian Craig, is hardly compulsive listening.
There is so much more to be said about contemporary sexuality in rural life.
For me, The Archers remains something of a love-hate relationship. I often find myself shouting at the radio as I listen. But you can recognise its shortcomings and still get hooked. In some ways that is its genius; it gets us talking and debating. And then there is the attraction of those other echoes that listeners hear – or imagine they hear.
The recent drama of the Aldridge family having to vacate Home Farm to fund the clean up of the River Am, after it was polluted by patriarch Brian, for instance, has been referred to by some Archers chatterati as “Ambi-noir”. The will-they-won’tthey tension over if they would ever leave the comfort of the family farmhouse has even been taken as a metaphor for Brexit.
Fanciful? Of course, but we Ambridge academics take our subject very seriously, at the same time as having a lot of fun riffing an extended metaphor. It all comes down to something simple. You can’t help but compare what happens in rural Borsetshire with what happens in the real world around us.
It would just be nice if the female characters of The Archers were allowed to catch up.
There have been hints that Shula might be heading for a same-sex relationship