From The Sunday Times, 2026 01 04

[Colin Howard]

75 years of the Archers
Happy birthday, Ambridge - but can it make it to 100? (and who clobbered
George with a wine bottle?) Patricia Nicol reports

Patricia Nicol

On January 1, 1951, a new radio drama began a three-month trial on the BBC
Light Programme. "And a happy new year to all," bade Dan Archer, the
patriarch of Brookfield, stressing he included the child expected by his
daughter-in-law Peggy. Tony Archer, born on February 16, 1951, will (all
being well) soon celebrate his 75th birthday on air.

And how did The Archersthe world's , most successful continuing drama, mark
its own 75th this New Year's Day? Well, with ireworks. Literally - David
Archer launched a display from the Jubilee Field - and metaphorically.
(Warning: the following contains spoilers for anyone still to catch up.) On
New Year's Eve George Grundy, Ambridge's leading ne'er-do-well, was hit over
the head with a wine bottle and apparently left for dead. Who would do such
a thing? By the grim assessment of his mother, Emma Grundy: "After all the
people George has hurt . . . it could have been anyone."

Like the rising tide of sewage at Bridge Farm in spring 2025, this story
will run and run. But will The Archers? It attracts up to 4.7 million weekly
listeners, making it Radio 4's most popular on-demand show, but in 2051 will
this everyday tale of country folk celebrate its centenary? Probably the
future of the ictional Borsetshire residents is dependent on that of the
BBC.But Jeremy Howe, the editor of The Archers since 2018, is bullish about
this "goose that lays the golden egg" continuing to thrive.

"As long as we keep that wonderful cocktail of pathos, wit and brilliant
characters and as long as we're tracking the evolution of the English
countryside, I think we'll be there for another two or three thousand
years," he says, seemingly only half-joking. From June a stage show, The
Archers: Live at 75, will tour.

The Archers can be more optimistic about reaching 100 than its television
upstart rivals, whose audiences are fast dwindling, along with their
budgets.Tomorrow, Coronation Street (aged 66) sufers the indignity of a
one-hour crossover special when its cast comes together with that of
Emmerdale (aged 54). Viewers' votes will decide which of four two-handed
scenes will be in the show. Such stunts underline the perilous future of TV
soaps in the new world of streaming and YouTube.

The Archers is ostensibly about farming. Crucially, the rural backdrop
provides emotive high stakes: the morning after Grace's death, Phil Archer
still had to get up to milk cows. His nephew Tony continues to tend the land
where his son John died in a terrible tractor accident.

But, Howe says with a chuckle, it wouldn't have lasted ten episodes, let
alone more than 20,000, if its driving force had really been agricultural
innovation. Instead, what propels The Archers is its characters and the
ploughing of classic themes: family, succession, money, class, dynastic
alliances, the haves and have-nots.

Certainly, over 75 years, the citizens of Ambridge have withstood far worse
than the periodic looding of the Am. There was the stable fire that killed
the newlywed Grace Archer on the 1955 night that ITV launched. This century,
listeners have witnessed the Grundys' eviction from Grange Farm; the torrid
love triangle of Emma, Ed and Will; Nigel Pargetter plummeting to his death;
Helen stabbing her husband, Rob Titchener, after months of dripdrip coercive
control; modern slavery; Jim Lloyd's moving coming-to-terms with historical
sexual abuse; and, lately, a litany of lies and woes relating to the angry,
self-pitying George. He, incidentally, is played brilliantly by Angus Stobie
as an ill-starred Gen Z malcontent as lawed and thwarted as any
Shakespearean illegitimate.

"You've got this extraordinary sense of continuity in The Archers," Howe
says, "right from that irst script [ilmed with members of the present cast
for this anniversary] where Dan alluded to Lilian and Tony, characters with
us still. In the background you have the English countryside, which evolves
yet endures. Also the listener lives the life of Ambridge day by day by
day."

That audience is enduring too. From Ambridge's creator, Godfrey ["God"]
Baseley, onwards, successive editors have balked at The Archers being
labelled a soap opera, preferring "continuing drama". But it is a soap,
albeit a Waitrose-type one. In the digital age, while its audience has
remained steady at about ive million, viewing igures for TV soaps have
plummeted faster than a Pargetter. The mash-up Corriedale is a ig leaf for
Coronation Street and Emmerdale contracting to ive instead of six episodes
weekly, now that average audiences are about four million. EastEnders gets
3.6 million, which makes its newish Ł87 million studios "the BBC's HS2",
according to one waspish source. In their late-1980s heyday, these shows
regularly drew more than 20 million viewers.

Plus, The Archers is reaching younger audiences. The show consistently ranks
in the top ten most downloaded on BBC Sounds - sometimes it is even among
the top shows downloaded by 18-to-35year-olds, although the average age of
its listeners remains (as with Radio 4) 56. There are numerous theories as
to why young people might tune in, including that the show irst insinuates
itself into the consciousness of the very youngest via the distinctive
dum-teedum of its theme tune, Barwick Green, which shares the child-friendly
rhythms of Nellie the Elephant.

Listenership is often matrilineal. Emerald O'Hanrahan, who plays the
constantly striving, frequently scuppered Emma Grundy with such ierce
purpose, "grew up listening" with her grandmother, a fan "from the very irst
episode until the day she died. When I was ofered Emma, it felt like there
was no other job that would have been so big in her mind."

But the show is also obviously courting younger listeners, with more
storylines for characters such as George and the posh house-sharers Lily
Pargetter, Josh Archer and Paul Mack. Howe has been accused of trying to
turn it into Hollyoaks by sceptics who harrumph that these stories detract
from what should be the core focus. Whither Ruth and David? The show is,
after all, The Archers, not The Grundys or Ambridge (although I love the
Grundys and how they relect breadline Borsetshire - how prison for George
feels a life sentence in a way it never did for Freddie Pargetter, with
Lower Loxley as his safety net).

Others worry that newer arrivals such as the garrulous Geordie Joy Horville
are supplanting stock characters like the snobbish Lynda Snell. And although
I like Dr Malik and her family and feel she, in particular, serves a
credible purpose, I share concerns that too many characters speaking in
accents from across the UK difuses the essential Middle England identity of
Ambridge. Also, couldn't they be a bit bolder about politics?

Last week there was a shot at redemption for George, via Alice, before fate
intervened. "I never think of George as a two-dimensional villain," says
Stobie, who plays him as fully Borsetshire but speaks naturally in an
elegant Edinburgh burr. "He's still only 20. He's still working things out."

So is the audience, keen to identify his attacker. In the spin-of drama The
Archers: Truth and Lies, a detective, played by Claire Skinner, interrogates
Emma, Brad Horrobin, George's detested former colleague Hannah Riley, Lilian
Bellamy, the village copper Harrison Burns, an outraged Brian Aldridge and
the criminal great-uncle Clive Horrobin. But are they the suspects listeners
would haul in for questioning? What of the injury to Fallon's hand from "a
broken glass"? And why was Jazzer behaving so shiftily? Are the "lash
wheels" George noted as he stumbled from the Bull a clue? Or does the truth
lie closer to home?

"Sometimes the apple that looks the nicest is the most rotten - and might be
sitting on your family tree," Skinner's detective, Sally Griiths, warns
Emma. Is the hitherto silent Keira, so "sick of George" that she briely ran
away from home, about to emerge from the shadows?

I would love a quiet night at the Bull, nursing a pint of Shires, to try to
igure all of this out.

Colin Howard, living in Southern England, is hoping you and your family,
acquaintances and friends have enjoyed a pleasant Festive holiday and now a
peaceful, prosperous and happy 2026.