William Smethurst BORN MARCH 10, 1945 DIED JULY 27, 2016, AGED 71
WHEN William Smethurst was made producer of The Archers in 1978, the long-running soap was going through a dark period, according to a BBC spokeswoman, so much so that plunging listener numbers meant it faced cancellation.
Smethurst, who had joined four years earlier as a writer, revolutionised the programme. Emphasising the need for it to be rooted in village life, he also brought in new characters including Caroline Sterling née Bone, the aristocratic Nigel Pargetter, Susan Carter née Horrobin and the Grundys as well as killing off some of the older ones, including Dan and Doris Archer.
He hired a host of new writers including Mary Cutler, who is still there and now the longestserving writer, The Woman In Black author Susan Hill, and Helen Leadbetter. The show’s popularity soared: when Shula married in 1981 she was photographed by Lord Lichfield and Princess Margaret made a guest appearance in 1984.
Part of his brilliance, according to Cutler, was to understand that The Archers was essentially a social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen: “This meant that though terrible things could, and do, happen to our characters – the good would end happily and the bad unhappily,” she said.
“He told me I could write anything I liked at all – shock the audience to the core in one scene as long as the next scene was Tom Forrest listening to birdsong on Lakey Hill.”
Smethurst’s favourite character was Shula, followed by Captain, Jack Woolley’s dog.
Smethurst had been a script editor on Play For Today and left in 1986 to become executive producer of serials for Central Television, taking over Crossroads as well as working on Boon and Jupiter Moon. He wrote several books and was, according to one critic, “the man who turned The Archers into a cult.”