A former editor of the Archers has warned against the BBC Radio 4 soap becoming too sensational, following a dramatic twist on Sunday night in which the character Helen Titchener stabbed her abusive husband Rob.
John Yorke, a former controller of BBC drama series who was also acting editor of the programme for three months in 2013, praised his successor Sean O’Connor for handling the attempted murder storyline “cleverly and plausibly”, but said he hoped it did not mark a new era for the series.
“The trick with the Archers is that you can only bring in these storylines very, very, very rarely,” he said.
“If you start doing them on a regular basis, you destroy all sense of plausibility, and the strength of that show is the illusion of plausibility and the illusion of everyday life. You need to get as much jeopardy about jam making as you do about serious social issues.”
Monday night’s follow-up episode revealed that Rob had not died from the three stab wounds but remained in a critical condition, while Helen was arrested and taken into custody for the attack.
O’Connor, who is leaving his job soon to become executive producer of EastEnders, has overseen an era of trauma for the fictional farming village of Ambridge, featuring floods, death and extramarital affairs. There were complaints that the series had become too sexed up, even attracting a rebuke from the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, who said the producers should ensure “we don’t lose what is precious”.
Rob’s stabbing has been the most controversial O’Connor storyline so far and is the first potential murder in the programme’s 65-year history.
Yorke said O’Connor’s replacement should be careful to keep the plots plausible.
He said: “It’s a very delicate line on the Archers because it’s so much more grounded in realism than the other shows. Going big in the Archers is a harvest failing, where big in EastEnders is an earthquake or a tsunami.
“While it is brilliant that Sean has done it, whoever takes over from him should be very wary about doing that kind of thing again in a hurry. The audience can react very quickly against storylines if they feel they are sensational.”
The stabbing was the culmination of a storyline that had been building up for months, with Rob subjecting his wife to emotional taunts and domestic abuse. It prompted tens of thousands of responses on social media, with some criticising the show for opting for melodrama usually reserved for television soaps.
Defending the divisive storyline, O’Connor told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: “I think it’s absolutely what the Archers should be doing. The Archers is not a chocolate box storyline set in the 1950s. We’ve been doing hard-hitting storylines since the start of the show. We’re trying to do it faithfully and honour the women’s stories we’re trying to represent.”
O’Connor’s two-and-a-half year tenure as editor has produced consistently high audience figures, with 4.8m listeners during the last quarter of 2015, just shy of the show’s 5m record in 2013.
After Sunday night’s episode, listeners rushed to donate to the Helen Titchener Fund, a JustGiving page set up by a listener, which has raised more than £92,000 for the domestic violence charity Refuge.
Polly Neate, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, a charity which advised the Archers’ writers on the domestic abuse storyline, said: “Some listeners have expressed their belief that the events of last night are not realistic – and it is true that a victim of domestic abuse attacking the perpetrator is far less common than the other way around. Two women a week, on average, are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales.
“However, some abused women do attack their partners after experiencing long-term abuse – often when they are fearing for their life or the lives of their children. We need to remember the terrible abuse that Helen has been living with for a long time.”
Most scandalous soap storylines
Prostitution: The troubled EastEnders character Janine Butcher became a sex worker to fund her drug addiction.
Incest: Brookside attracted widespread criticism for a storyline featuring brother and sister Nat and Georgia Simpson embarking on an incestuous affair. It was such an unpopular twist that the show’s producer later admitted they had got it wrong and axed the characters from the soap.
Paedophilia: In 2009, EastEnders attracted more complaints than any other BBC show for a storyline in which teenager Whitney was sexually groomed by her stepfather.
Lesbian kiss: In 1994, the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss between Beth and Margaret on Brookside caused such controversy that it was removed from the weekend omnibus.
HIV: In the early 1990s, EastEnders was accused of going too far with a storyline in which Mark Fowler was diagnosed with HIV, but it was praised by Aids charities at the time for challenging common prejudices.
• This article was amended on 6 April 2016. An earlier version said that Rob’s stabbing is the first murder, rather than potential murder, in the programme’s history.
