The Archers (Radio 4) iPlayer
Alice Isn’t Dead (podcast
Shall we talk drama? Let’s smash some cups (great sound effect) and get dramatic. Plays on the radio have had a bad press – some of it from me – and it’s not always the plays’ fault. The problem with most audio drama is that listeners need to invest in the world that’s created, and 45 minutes is not long to conjure a place worth visiting. The best audio drama goes on a bit, often for months. It gives you an interior map and then reveals more places as it continues, whether those places are a location or another side to a character. The drama itself can be boring, or unrealistic, or badly acted… it doesn’t matter. As long as the world is rich enough for us to believe in, the drama will succeed.
Which brings me to The Archers. I have, in my time, visited Ambridge. I’ve had lunch in the Bull: well, the pub on which it’s based, the Old Bull in Inkberrow. (Two notes: one, other villages and pubs lay claim to being the inspiration for The Archers; two, I went to Inkberrow by mistake.) Anyway, my visit did not alter my vision of Ambridge one bit. As far as I’m concerned, the real-life pub is the wrong way round, with the bar on the opposite side to where it should be. I have my own Ambridge in my head, as all listeners do.
And I have my vision of Rob and Helen: their home, the shop, Rob’s awful mum, Ursula, little Henry, everything. Their relationship is now so weird that every time I hear them speak, I get worried. Ten weeks to go until Helen has Rob’s baby, and the action is ramping up. Rob and Ursula close to packing off Henry to boarding school; Helen is sleepwalking and (supposedly) threatening Henry while doing so; she’s been prescribed antidepressants. The previous week’s run climaxed with Rob hitting Helen; last week, an episode closed with the clear intimation of him raping her again.
This story has built up over long months, and there is a lot going on here. Rob’s unhappy past at boarding school, possibly playing itself out in his description of Helen’s sleepwalking; the strain of an interfering mother-in-law staying “to help” for four whole weeks; Rob’s classic abuser’s gas-lighting technique of twisting the truth, making Helen feel as though everything is her fault. And she does feel it. “I don’t know who I am any more,” she told Kirsty last week, in a possible breakthrough. “It’s my own fault… I brought it on myself.”
God, it’s gripping stuff, mostly because it’s so frustrating. Does nobody in the village notice the way Rob speaks to Helen? Shouting at her to sit down, forcing her to leave social situations when she doesn’t want to? I know that comparing The Archers with EastEnders is a cliche, but I’m desperate for some of the Ambridge folk to come over all Albert Square. Rob wouldn’t stand a chance there or on Coronation Street. He’d have been ripped to shreds by every woman in the pub, from Annie Walker to Pat Butcher, Liz McDonald to Peggy Mitchell. Everyone’s too nice in Borsetshire. Helen is paying the price for everyone’s good manners. Only Kirsty – come on, Kirsty! – and Fallon seem to offer hope.
Another successful long-running drama is the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, and the Night Vale team have just come up with a new one, Alice Isn’t Dead. The first episode came out on 8 March and new ones will arrive every other Tuesday. The female narrator, Alice, is driving a truck across America. A road trip! But – oh dear – the scary kind. Alice has an odd cargo (deodorant sticks) and a very odd stalker, whom she meets, one night, in a diner. The scenes she describes are genuinely awful – I can see them in my mind’s eye now – and the timeline hops around, so we’re not sure if there are two women or one or what’s happened when. This is intriguing, David Lynch-style stuff – and so far its world works.
