The BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, has rebuked the controller of Radio 4 and the makers of The Archers amid complaints that the soap has become too sensationalised.
The world’s longest-running drama, The Archers has been criticised by some listeners following the arrival of its new editor, Sean O’Connor, whose credits include EastEnders, Hollyoaks and Footballers’ Wives.
Critics said recent plotlines were more akin to goings-on in Albert Square or Dallas than the “everyday story of country folk”.
Hall acknowledged the criticism in an interview with the Radio Times. “The Archers matters. It is an extraordinary drama,” he said.
“I realise this because I live with some Archers devotees, I know how people feel about The Archers and I hope [Radio 4 controller] Gwyneth [Williams] and the team will be thinking about what is happening and making sure that we don’t lose what is precious.”
Former home secretary David Blunkett is among those unimpressed by the latest storylines in the fictional town of Ambridge. Last year he said the soap he had listened to since he was four now left him “losing the will to live”.
“Under new management – new editor, new writers – I fear that The Archers is on the verge of becoming the disappearing soap,” the MP said.
“The dominant family in the village of Ambridge is the Archers – or at least they were. For, one by one, the family, by death or disgrace, and finally the threat of a new road, have found themselves dismissed from the plot.”
O’Connor, who also worked as a theatre director and had a stint on the Radio 4 drama in the late 1990s, took over from Vanessa Whitburn in 2013 when she stepped down after 22 years. He described the show as “Shakespearean”.
Recent plots have included Roy Tucker having an affair with Elizabeth Pargetter, whose husband was killed off in 2011, falling off a roof in an episode marking the show’s 60th anniversary (an incident which itself proved controversial).
O’Connor has previously denied sexing up the soap with the pair’s tryst. “They have only had sex twice. That’s hardly sexing up,” he said.
The Guardian critic Nancy Banks-Smith said last month that the soap reminded her “increasingly of Dallas”. She said characters had a “disconcerting habit of reappearing with entirely different heads”, in a reference to actors being replaced, and “fighting for life in a forest of exclamation marks”. They included farmer Tony Archer, who was crushed against a wall and then trampled by a bull.
BBC broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire compared it to a “posh edition of Jeremy Kyle” after listening to the soap for the first time this month.
But Williams denied it had become too sensational, saying the undercurrent of the programme was still “everyday life in the country”. She told Radio 4 last month: “I don’t agree. If you look back, there have always been extraordinary things going on in The Archers – kidnaps, arsons, all kinds of things.”
It could have been even more sensational if the BBC’s director of radio Helen Boaden had not banned a storyline in which Ed Grundy would have been jailed for life for a murder he did not commit, on the grounds of it being too far-fetched.
The plot was considered for the show when it was still edited by Whitburn. “Murders in country villages by people you have never met are unbelievably rare. And this felt so far-fetched that I banned it – to the great chagrin of the then editor,” Boaden told last year’s Radio Festival.
The series had an average weekly audience of 4.7 million listeners in the third quarter of last year, but four years ago, when it turned 60, it had more than 5 million. It also topped a list of the most downloaded BBC shows of the past decade.
A Radio 4 spokesperson said: “As Tony Hall says, The Archers is an extraordinary drama and, alongside other long-running shows, evolves with the times.
“We always listen to our audiences and the importance of The Archers is very much recognised by the team behind the show as well as the millions of listeners who tune in each week.”
