Has anyone else begun to suspect that The Archers’ scriptwriters have been taken off Prozac? Maybe it’s something to do with the recent bad publicity about the drug, or perhaps the Pebble Mill Health Trust has been given new guidelines on pill dispensation. Whatever the reason, harsh reality has taken over from ‘everyday life’ in the fictional world of Ambridge, and we were confronted with not one but two disturbing storylines that have now begun to unravel with the heart-lurching inevitability of real life. Not once, but twice on successive evenings last week I found myself weeping over a bubbling saucepan. At Willow Farm, Mike Tucker worried away about his daughter-in-law Hayley as she went into premature labour; while over at Home Farm Jenny has at last been forced to admit that wicked old Brian really doesn’t have a heart. Traumatic stuff.
It’s weird how in Soapland characters transmogrify through the years into something quite different from how they began.
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