The Knives Are Out....

So Vicar Alan is going to get spliced at a nice 'interdenominational' service at St Stephen's. Asian lawyer (and former victim of racial abuse from Roy Tucke ) Usha has encountered objections from her family and Alan got the knock back from his late wife's mother. Now, ex-jailbird Susan Carter is dishing the dirt to a reporter from the Borchester Echo. Now, Susan (typical example of glass house dweller) is really the best qualified to set standards in faith, morality and the milk of human kindness. You do begin to wonder what is happening at script writers meetings.

Crown Court?

I don't know how many of you remember a long-running series (I think produced by Granada TV) called Crown Court. I'm sorry but The Archers is turning into this much loved (and lamented) lunch time soap, so favoured by students, the unemployed and the housebound. On Friday night 'the jury' were sent home for the weekend - leaving Kathy (and the whole radio audience) frustrated and slightly bored. Several people I know have given up listening because of this ludicrously drawn out story line. Rather like the Diana Inquest most of us are beginning to wonder what the point is. If the BBC wanted to display rape cases more accurately surely Kathy's entire sex life would have been dragged into the open, the list of her partners and ex-husbands would have been revealed, total character assassination would have ensued and Owen's blameless character and mild manner would have been paraded for the delight of the jury. Please put an end to all our misery!

Just Incredible?

Now if I'd seen the forthcoming scripts for The Archers and discovered that Nic (the child beater) had in fact been subject to alien abduction and swapped for a creature from the planet Zark, would I (or indeed anyone else) be totally surprised?

Lets face it the scriptwriters have obviously recently attended the Phil Redmond (he of Brookside, Grange Hill and Hollyoaks) school for the most unlikely plot lines. Usually we have the 'hard' story lines interspersed with something happier and more amusing - usually involving Lillian, Linda, the Grundys or Bert Fry. Now even the usual April Fool merry japes (oh how we laughed in the 1960s and 70s on this annual feast of merriment) fall flat. So darling Pip sends a text claiming she's spent the night at Jonathan's and David goes ape. Laugh, I never thought I'd start. So relentlessly we have the trial and Kathy's ordeal, religious controversy, (Alan & Usha oh so surprisingly meeting opposition when they get engaged - so looking forward to the Bishop adapting the order of service in true CofE manner to accommodate a few Hindu rituals, maybe Ganesh will pop in, elephant head & all), child abuse (or was it just youthful high spirits), and bovine TB resulting in collapse of the Borsetshire cheese business, and not forgetting Jack's dementia. Oh how we regret the passing of Nelson & the antique shop, and Nigel's ice cream van.