RIP Nigel Pargetter...

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...and RIP The Archers, after a chronic decline.

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thearchers/2011/01/graham_seed_on_playing_and_lea.html

Tributes welcome.

[roamingsue]

For the first timeo ever in 35 years I have stpped listening. The Archers is so depressing and more akin to Eastenders. It was my escape hatch on reality.... no longer ....

RIP The archers....

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So say we all, Sue. And welcome, sort of, to the board...

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The moderation is getting silly on Discuss The Archers now, and since my computer's harddrive is kaput since last week and beyond recovery, I'm just going to put the posts that are being hidden here for the duration, one that was modded and one that probably will get modded, going by the present trend...

Gervase:
<quote>Thank you for yet another personal attack Joe. I certainly shall not be clicking the triangle however; better for your words of wisdom to remain there in all their glory.</quote>
If you liked my comment so much, maybe you'd like another one? On the other hand, it might be best to run it by Taylor first, to see if she approves. I've said it before, so maybe it's a 'same tired post', but describing something as a 'personal attack', thereby refusing to let it pass without comment *or* use the system provided by moderators to deal with such an alleged attack, just seems a little disruptive. Like someone is actually *trying* to cause trouble.

Now, as to your last comment, this has also been done to death. The Archers is a radio programme produced by people in the employ of the BBC (freelance or otherwise). Despite the novel attitude of Archers Anarchists, there's not really a village called Ambridge in a county called Borchestershire, where the owner of a country estate really fell of his roof because people do 'just fall off roofs'. Posters to this board discuss plotlines all the time, even invent them. Discussing, and even querying the motivations of the production teamhas never been off bounds before, and your apparent wish to make it so is very unlikely to change that. Bless.

It's odd, but I can't seem to reply to Tayler's auto-message.

I can't imagine what you, or some nameless catpee-er, found wrong with my last post, unless... it couldn't possibly have been the 'bless', could it? Have we become so thin-skinned that *that* could be grounds for removing a post? You'd better remove 12 and 18 as well then, because one, as I said calls another of my posts a 'personal attack', but doesn't back up the accusation while the other implies *I* am a troll, and that surely is the the unsayable, like a member of parliament calling another one a liar. These *have* to be worse than 'bless'...

The worst part is that you seem to have gotten out of the habit of explaining *why* a post has been removed. Four posts or so back, it was 'Failed for repeating a failed post', which as I recall was a rather dodgy decision. Is that why you don't explain anymore, because explaining gives someone a chance to review the faulty logic?

Well, at least I got Gervase onto a thread in The Bull which is broadly discussing why some posters would rather discuss other posters in Discuss The Archers than The Archers...

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The comment below has been recommended as compulsory reading, so I'm including it here:

859. At 5:30pm on 31 Jan 2011, Prospero wrote:

In common with many, I felt even more angered and insulted by Vanessa Whitburn's complete failure to address the real issues in the Feedback programme. And I don't like being talked down to by someone who clearly thinks she knows more about radio and drama than everyone else. Like Helen above, I have taught journalism to post-graduate students. I have worked in the media for 30 years, including a year as a BBC national network radio producer myself. I even lived for a year in Worcestershire ("Borsetshire") when I was teaching at the BBC's training centre in Evesham ("Felpisham"). But I have so far written my criticisms here from the viewpoint of a listener, because one needs only to have been a regular listener to have noticed the steady decline in artistic standards over the last few years of The Archers. However, perhaps if the editor won't listen to her audience, maybe she will take more notice of what fellow professionals have to say - although to be honest I doubt it; I should imagine that her cast and production team had plenty to say about the planned 60th anniversary debacle, but it looks as though she still chose to ignore it.

As it is of considerable relevance to this thread, here is a partial transcript of what went on in Feedback on 28/01/11 (I think fair use applies here) for those who missed it or would care to mull it over at leisure, together with my comments. I hope the House Rules won't be used to censor this posting, but if so I shall be posting it elsewhere too.

Roger Bolton: For many people the big dramatic event across the last few weeks is what's happened in the Archers and the ill-advised venture onto the roof by Nigel Pargetter. So how shall we describe the reaction? I think probably the Feedback listeners are livid - that's the only way I can describe them. I mean, for example David Wright calls it "the biggest mistake the organisation has made in its long and distinguised radio history". David Hewitt, who calls himself a former Archers addict says, "the whole production team should be ashamed of themselves. The Archers and Radio 4 in general has no need for this kind of ham-fisted approach. So do you think, Gwyneth Williams, there should be a police inquiry into the death of Nigel Pargetter?

Gwyneth Williams: I don't think so. But I do feel sad. I mean, I have been reading the log very carefully, and I do feel for listeners who feel they've lost a friend.

[GW falls at the first fence - fails to realize that although many of us would rather not have lost Nigel, what we are really concerned about are the issues of endless depressing storylines, poor scriptwriting, needless sensationalism, characters acting out of character, general decline in artistic quality and a complete lack of any sense of celebration of the 60th anniversary. And of course, the treatment of Graham Seed. If after reading all the comments - as she claims she has done - she is still so out of touch with what listeners think, what is the point of going on?]

RB: Some think it's a bit cynical, here we are the 60th anniversary of The Archers, right, you need something, a big bang and there's lots of trills beforehand, which suggests that it's going to be changed totally, and, well, maybe they weren't expecting a plane crash, but they thought here is something that's been summoned out for sensationalist reasons to get on the front pages, it's not organic, it's not something that, someone has an illness over a period and dies, somebody falls off a roof - bang! - and this is of the worst sort of sensationalist soap material.

GW: Well, what I'd say to that is, this is a tremendously successful and rather brilliant creative team under Vanessa Whitburn as editor - the world's longest-running soap, I mean, what an extraordinary thing.

[Well, for the first 40 years at least VW wasn't editor. In the last 20 it appears she has presided over a long, slow decline in quality which has brought us to the present low.]

RB: But is your message therefore that one accidental death is enough in Ambridge for the time being?

GW: No, I would never put a creative straightjacket around a team

[Well, in that case as controller you have to accept responsibility for your choice of editor when things go wrong and act accordingly. We shall see.]

RB: Do you know if you've lost any yet? I mean, presumably will you have to wait till you get the RAJAR statistics to know?

GW: We will, and -

RB: Because you don't know yet, do you, because we've had people write to us saying, "that's it, I'm not going to listen any more".

GW: I know, I know it's sad, yes, I hope they'll come back - come back, Archers fans, come back!



Then we have a brief interlude while Feedback discusses other programmes, followed by this:

RB: . . . beef-eating fans of Wolfgang Amadeus will be livid about John Staples's criticism, but their indignation will almost certainly pale into insignificance compared with that of the fans of the Pargetter family of Ambridge. We've had more emails on the sudden death of Nigel - exit, pursued by a slate - than anything else in a long time. Around 200 in fact, and that's on top of the 613 complaints directly to The Archers team, and the deafening buzz in the Twittersphere. If The Archers' editor Vanessa Whitburn wanted to win headlines on the serial's 60th birthday, she certainly succeeded. The trouble is, she seems to be in danger of losing listeners. One of them is Nicki Hillier. "Never again," she says, "will The Archers' signature tune be heard" in her household. We paired her up with Judy Crebbs, a lifelong fan, and despatched them both to Ambridge to see if it really was all over between Nicki and the soap.

[skip forward past the studio visit, where the production team has used Feedback's request for some hard answers as an excuse to indulge in a fluff piece which won't go one iota towards placating irate listeners, and if anything is like to anger them even more. . .]

. . . we headed for the office of Vanessa Whitburn, The Archers Editor, where Nicki got straight to the point.

Nicki Hillier: I've listened to The Archers for 53 years, and I found the 60th anniversary episode insulting to listeners' intelligence with the weak storylines, the unbelievable script. I thought the acting was poor. I know that there are people who - hundreds of thousands of people - who feel that you have got this badly wrong, and quite frankly want an apology. You've lost me and, I know, many, many thousands of people as listeners.

[To be fair, I don't think the acting was poor, although the result certainly was. The actors had to do the best they could with the material they had, and as we know you can't make silk purses from sows' ears. But the rest of NH's criticism pretty much echoes what most of us feel.]

Vanessa Whitburn: Yes, obviously that does affect me, you know, I'm sorry about that - I hope that you will continue to listen. I can't control that, but I hope that you will.

[Here we go - she's already in evasionary denial mode. She uses the classic ploy of saying "I'm sorry about that. . .", which expresses sympathy, rather than "I'm sorry FOR that. . .", which accepts blame. And yes, she hopes we'll continue to listen, because if we don't her job might be on the line.]

VW: I have to disagree with you about whether it's good drama and whether it's well-acted, because I think there is a different issue about, whether it's been a storyline twist that you personally and several other listeners wouldn't like, and whether it's well-acted and well done. I think the scripts were good, I think it was well-acted, I don't really want to get hung-up on that.

[No, we already know you don't want to tackle the real issues. You just want to disagree with us, because you think you are right and we are wrong. And "several" other listeners - PUH-LEEZE! More like several hundred thousand. As far as the scripts being good is concerned, the R4 audience is in general erudite and discerning. Many of us are writers and media professionals ourselves. We have seen countless eloquently expressed critical comments here and elsewhere, from published writers and academics such as Marie Noakes, respected media critics and others. But you don't need to be professionally experienced or academically qualified to know how bad this really was. A dead haddock could spot how lame and unbelievable the drama and characterisation were, and pretending anything else just makes you look silly. A little humility and a thorough study of Aristotle's "Poetics" might be in order.]

VW: But whether we should have done it to mark the anniversary is a worthwhile debate.

[Oh, so by implication the opinions of thousands of listeners who don't agree with you are not worth debating?]

VW: And, I didn't do it - we didn't do it as a team -

[Yes, Vanessa, YOU didn't (or rather, did) do it - it's obvious who calls the tune in your production team, only once you realised you had admitted it here you were quick to change your words to cover up the gaff, in the same way as you did when you let the cat out of the bag on the Today programme.]

VW: . . . to celebrate the anniversary, which some of the press have said we did. We did it to mark the anniversary.

[As others have pointed out, the whole of The Archers web site has "Celebrating 60 Years" trumpeted all over it. Disingenuous, or what?]

VW: And I just think that of course it's been traumatic, and in a funny kind of way what you're saying to me is a compliment to the programme, because yes, it's affected you - drama should do that.



NH [sounding angry now]: It has not been easy to say, "I'm no longer listening to this". I've almost felt grief stopping listening to it, that Ambridge is no longer the place I used to visit. Ambridge is full of caricatures of people, in Jazzer, as in Julie. There's constant outpourings of grief and angst, we've had Jolene - I cease to care, and I never, ever, ever thought that I would live to say that about The Archers and about Ambridge.

VW: I'm really sorry you feel that way.

[Same tactic again. Not, "I'm really sorry I MADE you feel that way," which is rather different. No - no sign of any real apology here.]

VW: I would ask you to give it another go. Maybe you will at some point. I mean, the fact is that not everybody agrees with you, I mean we do have people who say that the acting is brilliant, that the characters are brilliant at the moment, but that in a way we could discuss that on and on, you know. In the end, if it chimes with you, you'll come back to us. So, all I can say is we're very sorry to lose you. Come back, after a break, maybe.

[How many don't agree? How many do? How many say that it's brilliant? Let's have some figures, Vanessa. Maybe it's only you. Maybe even the rest of your production team themselves think it's a crock of brown stuff. Have you asked them? Maybe they're too scared to tell you. It will be interesting to see if in the months leading up to the publication of the relevant RAJAR figures, any of the cast or crew feel sufficiently disenchanted with the situation to break ranks and tell us what they really think.]

. . . But some people felt, where did this come from, was there pressure from BBC management to push something sensational for the 60th anniversary?

VW: Not at all. This story was evolved in the same way as we evolve all our stories - in huge discussion over considerable time. It's our job to look at the drama and decide what we're going to do.



VW: We don't think it would be an easy story. Some people have said, "Oh, but they wouldn't have gone onto the roof, they'd have sent somebody to do it" - that's the point in a way, this is all about human beings who sometimes make errors, and, you know, accidents happen in a split second. And, this was a foolish thing in the best sense of the word.

[Yes, Vanessa, human beings do make errors, and we look forward to your admitting the big one you've made here.]

NH: Did you make a bit of an accident on the Today programme, with giving away what happened, was that a foolish thing?

I did, and the irony is that I was the one who said let's just hold onto this mystery for another few hours. Well, you know, I have paid - they made mincemeat of me, didn't they, and I very sorry about that error, but I did make a mistake.

[OK - admit the easy bit, the bit you can't really deny, and hope it takes the heat off.]

NH: When John was killed-off we knew it was because John the person wanted to leave, but we never knew that Nigel did, and that's why a lot of us feel so strongly that it shouldn't have been him.

VW: Yes, I'm sure actors don't want to leave this programme, but all actors will tell you that no job is a job for life necessarily, and you cannot actually ask of a group of creative writers, a production team to always say that a character that's been created by them will, per se, go on forever.

[No, but it would be sensible to take the expectations of the audience into account. I'd be the first to say Nigel's character could have done with a re-vamp, but as some have suggested there were other ways of doing this. Even if we believed all that up-on-the-roof nonsense, we could have ended up with Nigel in a wheelchair, which would have opened up a fantastic range of possibilities for future drama, both uplifting and heart-rending. The fact that the production team didn't come up with this or any other of the countless possibilities that could have been explored for the 60th anniversary episodes reveals either a complete lack of imagination, or that somebody had already made up their mind that for whatever reason, Nigel had to go.]

So, I expect that having run the gauntlet of Feedback and swatted away the criticism again, VW will be indulging in another round of self-congratulation now. What she probably doesn't realise is that if things seem to have quietened down a little in the wake of her appearance it's not that we're happy with her response. Rather, we have come to terms with the fact that nobody is really going to address our criticisms properly, and if anything this makes us less likely than ever to return to the programme.