When things fall apart | 31 January 2019

It’s becoming clear that the travails afflicting all the major players in The Archers, Radio 4’s flagship drama, are intended by the soap’s writers (and new editor Jeremy Howe) to reflect what’s going on in the country at large, Ambridge as a microcosm of our imploding nation. As Home Farm is sold to absentee landlords with no interest in farming the land, reducing Brian and Jennifer to a terraced cottage on the green, and Ambridge’s stately home Lower Loxley Hall veers into chaos with the son and heir in jail and the business on the brink of disaster, even Brookfield, the Archers’ homestead, is standing on the edge of a financial precipice. It’s as if all the solid foundations of the soap are being rocked to the core —and it’s really unsettling.

This attempt to bring topicality back to Ambridge has been far too effective. The B-word has been barely mentioned but there’s no need.