For actor Annabelle Dowler, recording the Archers under lockdown involved making a den in her daughter’s wardrobe by covering it with duvets and an old mattress and hoping her two children didn’t decide they too wanted to be part of the fun.

Dowler, who plays Kirsty Miller, also put a sign on the door warning that mummy was recording the Archers: “Stay away + be silent otherwise you will get into trouble with the BBC and we will have no iPlayer for the rest of the lockdown!!!”

It worked. Dowler is among the characters who will be returning to Radio 4 from Monday in a very different version of the world’s longest-running soap opera.

After a three-week break in which classic episodes have replaced new ones, the Archers will return with Ambridge also under lockdown. It will not be dominated by coronavirus, though. Episodes in the first week include stories about Tracy and Harrison’s rivalry to be captain of the village cricket team and a minor emergency when the forage harvester driven by Josh Archer breaks down.

Jeremy Howe — editor of The Archers — has revealed: ‘For nearly 70 years Ambridge has been a haven for our audience, and so it continues to be.’ ‘Whilst Coronavirus might be coming to Borsetshire, listeners can still expect The Archers to be an escape, and the residents to be bickering and as playful and witty as ever. 

We want this new approach to The Archers to still be a picture of the way we live now in rural England that it has always been. ‘However, these are unprecedented times and the team has worked tirelessly to make sure we can continue to visit Ambridge.’

A high-profile domestic abuse storyline on The Archers in 2015 encouraged many other victims to seek help. One woman has told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme she only realised she had been in a controlling relationship when she listened to the BBC Radio 4 serial.

“The first time I realised what was happening to Helen, I felt something fall inside – your insides turn to water, because it was so familiar, just exactly the way it is,” says Helen Walmsley-Johnson.

The plot on The Archers depicted the gradually unfolding abuse of Helen Titchener by her controlling husband, Rob.

It was praised for its realism by domestic violence charities, who credited it with fuelling a rise in calls to the national domestic violence helpline by almost a fifth.

Ms Walmsley-Johnson says she did not know how to describe what had happened to her 10 years earlier until she heard the story and realised the similarities with her own life.

“The whole love thing, sweeping you off your feet and charming the socks off you, happens very quickly,” she says.

“The control part comes in very slowly underneath all that. So by the time that’s getting a grip on you, you are completely head over heels in love. It’s a distorted version of a normal relationship.”

From: Urban and Regional Planning research and dissemination list [mailto:URBAN-REGIONAL-PLANNING@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Cara Courage

Sent: 25 June 2017 14:52

To: URBAN-REGIONAL-PLANNING@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Subject: CfP: Third Academic Archers conference, London Feb 2018

Call for Papers: The Archers in fact and fiction: Academic analyses of life in rural Borsetshire

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the third Academic Archers conference, to be held on 17th February 2018 at The British Library, London.

The one-day conference will feature a number of 15 minutes papers, as well as 5 minute Quick Pitches and posters, around the programme and issues contained therein, of BBC Radio4’s The Archers.

Submissions are invited from any academic discipline and subjects might include but are by no means limited to:

• Queer perspectives on life in Ambridge
• Rural housing development – who benefits?
• Entrepreneurialism in rural communities
• Politics and protest – ‘right to the field’ in Borsetshire
• Brexit & Ambridge, what future post CAP?
• Gender, class and cricket in the village
• What is a gossip? Gendered approaches to info sharing
• Intergenerational justice in Ambridge
• Greenwashing Ambridge, from eco-warriors to biodiversity accountants?

This list is not meant to be exclusive or exhaustive, but is meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life in Ambridge and Borsetshire. The day is intended to give fans of The Archers a platform to exercise their love of the programme and their subject area.

If you are a fellow Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to both cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 28th July, indicating if you are proposing a paper, Quick Pitch or poster. Please submit this as a Word attachment. Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers panel and will be communicated by mid-September.

Further information on Academic Archers can be found at www.academicarchers.net/ and search for ‘Academic Archers 2017’ on YouTube for films of the 2017 conference.