Western Morning News (Saturday)
For 70 years, the everyday stories of country folk
THE Archers – the radio drama conceived in part to help spread information about farming innovations to the agricultural community – has celebrated its 70th anniversary with a special episode in which Ambridge “faces a life-changing crisis”.
Instalment number 19,343, in which “one resident makes a special announcement”, was aired on BBC Radio 4 at 7pm yesterday – New Year’s Day. It marks the end of a year in which storylines featured modern-day slave labour and an explosion at a country house hotel.
The year also saw bosses experiment with a different type of broadcast – monologues featuring characters’ thoughts and musings. But the new format, devised because of recording restrictions caused by lockdown, was not deemed a success by listeners.
Ambridge fans welcomed the soap’s return to the studio, with a socially distanced set-up of fewer cast members.
Pilot episodes of The Archers first aired in May 1950 on the BBC Midlands Home Service. Dubbed ‘ An everyday story of country folk’, the first national episode was broadcast on January 1 1951.
Actress June Spencer, who continues to play Peggy Woolley today, featured in the first episode. Now 101, she has no plans to retire. “I just love it. I think it’s what keeps me going,” the veteran actress previously told PA news agency.
The Archers’ editor Jeremy Howe recently said that plotting future episodes had been challenging amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“During the pandemic it has been really difficult to predict what we will be doing and when,” he said. How will we be able to live our lives in 10 weeks’ time? Will (local pub) The Bull be open or shut? What tier is Ambridge in?”
The Archers was created by Godfrey Baseley, originally as a way to help educate farmers in modern production methods when Britain was still in the grip of food rationing.
One of its longest serving writers and for many years the Agricultural Story Editor is Graham Harvey, who lives in Somerset and has been a regular columnist and writer for the Western
Morning News.
He told the WMN yesterday: “For 70 years this show has given the people of Britain an insider’s view on just about the most important way we humans change and re-create our environment. It’s probably more relevant in 2021 than it’s ever been in its long and colourful history.”
Devon cheesemaker and farmer Mary Quicke is the inspiration for one Archers’ character’s foray into the world of cheesemaking. Helen Archer’s development of award-winning Borcetshire Blue was based around Mary’s own work building up the world-famous cheddar making operation on her family’s farm at Newton St Cyres, near Exeter. Mary featured in a special edition of Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 yesterday, celebrating women in farming.