Title card for the radio show, The Archers.
The Archers is a UK radio soap opera that is heard over BBC radio Four in the UK. The series focuses on the fictional community of Ambridge, a rural farming village in the Midlands of England; as well as the eponymous family that lives there.
Created by Godfrey Baseley, The Archers began in May of 1950 as a localized BBC show (only heard in the local Midlands area), the series eventually went national on New Years Day of 1951.
The TV soap, Coronation Street, which took its first bow in 1960, is only nine years younger than The Archers in terms of longevity.
One of the few (if one of the ONLY) soaps that is still on radio, The Archers focuses on several generations of the Archer family and their friends in the farming community of Ambridge.
The Archers of Ambridge[]
Located in the fictional county of Borsetshire, Ambridge, so named because of its crossing over the River Am, is located near the (fictional) communities of Borchester, the county town; Hollerton, the railway station, Hollerton Junction which serves Ambridge; Penny Hassett, Waterley Cross, Lower Loxley and Felpersham (which served as the larger and Cathedral city of the area).
The Archer family is led by Jill Archer (Patricia Greene), the widow of farmer Phil Archer, and mother of four. Her four children are twins Shula Hebden-Lloyd (Judy Bennett) and Kenton Archer (Richard Attlee); as well as David Archer (Timothy Bentinck) and Elizabeth Archer Pargetter (Alison Dowling).
The level-headed Shula was once married to a solicitor, Mark Hebden, and upon his death, she had a son named Daniel, and then married veterinarian, Alistair Lloyd. Shula has a very straight-laced approach to life and her choices, although in romance, she has made some very bad choices, one of which broke a long-term friendship with solicitor, Usha Gupta.
Kenton, Shula's twin and the black sheep of the four siblings, currently lives in Ambridge with his third wife, Jolene, and runs the Bull, the community's local pub. He has a daughter, Meriel by his first wife, Mel.
Elizabeth Pargetter, the widow of wealthy Nigel Pargetter, lives in Lower Loxley Hall, the ancestral home of her husband's family in nearby Lower Loxley, and has twin children, Frederick and Lily.
Both were born via caesarean section, with Freddie being very underweight and had to be in an incubator to get over breathing issues.
Freddie is the more sweet-natured and sensitive of the two (having his dad's good-nature, at his christening, he wore the Pargetter gown at the behest of his granny, Julia, while Lily wore the Archer gown) and the slightly older Lily is the more easily-angered and sarcastic (much like her mum, Elizabeth, and also shares her mother's head for business). Despite those differences, Lily loves Freddie very much. Freddie can be sometimes moody and cocky (a lot of that comes from the loss of his father), and for dealing in narcotics, was landed in juvenile detention for a year. He learnt his lesson.
After a bout of depression, Lily holds closer to her brother and her mother.
Elizabeth's brother David lives on Brookfield Farm, with his wife, Ruth (nee Pritchard) and is the father of three children. Josh, Ben and oldest daughter Philippa (called Pip by the family, and called Phiz at College).
Pip has a level-head on her shoulders and is a very capable farmer, although she has, like her auntie Shula, had her share of romantic disasters.
She dated an older man named Jude Simpson, but he dumped her over the phone. She then had a relationship with a farmer named Spencer, but that too failed.
Focusing on her vocation, she became the target of two brothers, Rex and Toby Fairbrother. Rex had won her first, but his brother Toby fell for her and impregnated her. Rex now dates another woman in Ambridge.
Josh and Ben often aggravate their older sister, but she still loves them just the same. Pip recently gave birth to a daughter named Rosie Ruth Grace Archer. Toby is the baby's father, and the name Grace was in tribute to the Fairbrother heritage.
After Phil's death, Jill moved in with David and Ruth at Brookfield Farm and is currently living with them offering sage advice and enjoying being with her family.
Jill's late brother in-law, Jack Archer, was married to the former Peggy Perkins (June Spencer). Jack Archer died in 1972 due to his many years of heavy drinking. Peggy later married another man named Jack. This one was named Jack Woolley.
At first, Jack was quite the bounder (making the transition from urban living in Birmingham to rural living in Borsetshire), but he became enamored of the area and thanks to Peggy, he fell in love with it.
Jack and Peggy Woolley shared a loving marriage until his death of Alzheimer's complications. Peggy never remarried after Jack Woolley's death, and is now mainly known as Peggy Woolley.
Peggy's conservative tastes could cause some trouble, as she didn't take kindly to a female vicar, Janet Fisher, at Ambridge's local parish, so she attended services in nearby Borchester.
However, she returned when the female vicar was reassigned. She was fair-minded enough though to compliment her on how tastefully she performed her duties.
Despite, Peggy's criticism, most of the other Ambridge residents had no issues with Janet being their vicar
Peggy's mother the formidable Polly Perkins, always called Mrs. P, (Pauline Seville) also lived in the village from the series beginning in 1951 until her death in 1991.
Jack and Phil Archer also had a sister named Christine, who was married to George Belford until his death.
Peggy had to contend with Jack's adopted daughter, Hazel, and her scheming to get her inheritance from Jack. In this, she was a failure, as Peggy promptly put her in her place.
After her house was burned down by villainous Clive Horrobin, Christine, who doesn't like Clive, as she holds him responsible for her husband's death, currently shares a home with Peggy.
Jack and Peggy Archer had three children. Jennifer (Angela Piper), the oldest, who is married to corporate farmer Brian Aldridge (Charles Collingwood), after a previous marriage to wealthy Roger Travers-Macy, and has four children.
Adam Travers-Macy (Andrew Wincott), her oldest (his father was a farm hand named Paddy Redmond, but was adopted by Roger), a gay man and eco-farmer married to a chef Ian Craig (Stephen Kennedy), who works at Grey Gables, a former country club which became a luxury hotel.
While Grey Gables is currently closed due to renovations, Ian still plies his cooking skills for his family.
Ironically, Adam and Ian's relationship elicited very little if any moral outrage or criticism in Ambridge.
Only Sid Perks, the late owner of the Bull, and Adam's own grandmother, Peggy, had any objections, though the latter's objections receded and she eventually relented in her opinion and has embraced Ian as part of the family.
Adam has had his issues with fidelity, although, in spite of that, Ian still loves him, and he has issues with his stepfather, Brian, over agricultural issues (Brian being more profit driven, where Adam isn't).
When Adam goes a bit too far, it's usually Ian who's outspoken enough to put him in his place. However, Ian does love his husband quite dearly and is always there for him.
Ian and Adam have a child named Alexander Macy-Craig, called Xander, by his daddies.
Adam's grandmother, Peggy, was also uncomfortable with the relationship at first, due to her conservative ways, but she is used to Ian being in the family now, and she loves him dearly.
In fact, Ian gave Peggy unflagging support when she was caring for Jack during his Alzheimer's illness and his subsequent death.
For that, she was grateful for her grandson in law's care, which helped her in changing her tune about Ian.
Ian is a solid and dependable character, who is considered the community's go to guy for good food, understanding, support and comfort.
Socially easy-going and quite affable, Ian is the most sensible, a true rock of support and most genuinely caring person in the mixed Aldridge family.
Debbie Aldridge (Tamsin Greig) (nee Travers-Macy, but chooses to use her adopted name, Aldridge), is Jennifer's daughter, by Roger. She had been married to a man named Simon Gerrard, and, after divorcing him, later moved to a farm in Hungary, while she does make some visits to Ambridge. She has a semi-rivalry with her brother, Adam, due to their differences in farming policy, although they do try to understand one another.
Kate, the first of two children Jennifer had by Brian, is an often unsettled woman who has three children herself. Her oldest is Phoebe (by Roy Tucker); and her two younger children, Noluthando (Nolly) and Sipho Madikane by her later husband, Lucas Madikane, a South African broadcaster, whom she deserted in Johannesburg. The Aldridges youngest daughter is Alice, an aeronautical engineer who is married to farrier Chris Carter.
Also living with the family is young Irish boy Ruairi Donovan, who was Brian's son by his former lover, Siobhan Hathaway.
After his mother's death from cancer in 2007, Ruairi (pronounced Rory) moved in with his father and stepmother.
Jennifer, in spite of her intense (and very justifiable) anger at Brian for having a child with another woman, easily took the motherless Ruairi to her heart. Ruairi has also gotten on well with his step siblings, for the most part.
The one exception was Alice, who, in a drunken rage, told Ruairi that he didn't belong in their family.
That upset Ruairi and in turn angered the family towards Alice. She went into rehab for her drinking problems, but the damage was already done, Ruairi went to university feeling emotionally distant from his family.
Brian, his father, and Jennifer tried to help him to cope with Alice's nastiness, although he still can confide in Kate, Adam and Debbie.
As he is growing up, Ruairi is finding his niche within the family, despite the nastiness of Alice.
Jennifer's brother, Tony, whom she often scorns as the poorer relation of the family, was married to the former Pat Lewis (Patricia Gallimore), and had three children.
Their eldest son was John Daniel, who tragically died in a tractor accident after a particular row with his father.
This sent Pat into a massive depression. John's son (by a former girlfriend, Sharon), named Johnny, has moved to the farm, to his grandmother's delight, and helped her emerge from her depression.
The only girl, Helen (Louiza Patikas), had to endure a horrible and abusive marriage to the unspeakably evil Rob Tichener. She had stabbed him in Self-defense, and was acquitted of attempted murder charges. She has two children, Henry and Jack.
Their youngest, Thomas, who had just as bad luck with romance as anyone, moved to Canada for a time, but returned to Ambridge after his father's accident.
Jennifer and Tony have another sister, named Lilian Bellamy (Sunny Ormande), a gin-soaked, chain-smoking twice widowed bonne vivante, who always had a word to say about anything, and is continually needing help from her sister, a situation which often annoys Jennifer's husband, Brian.
Another sore spot for Brian is that Adam (who didn't much get along with his stepfather) and Lilian get along beautifully (she actually considers him her favourite nephew and accepts his marriage to Ian).
Lilian was once married to a man named Lester Nicholson, and then, after his death, she married a man named Ralph Bellamy. From that marriage came a son, James Rodney Dominic Bellamy. James was quite a selfish and spoilt young man.
Although, Lilian is more troubled at present, Jennifer, when she was younger, was more daring and rebellious (having an out of wedlock baby, who would become Adam).
Other characters included the eccentric Nigel Pargetter, Elizabeth's late husband; his late mother, Julia, a very haughty but well-meaning woman who, at first, did not like Elizabeth (she had wanted Nigel to marry one of Elizabeth's relations, Debbie Aldridge, so as to marry into the Aldridge fortune), but after a while, she grew to love her, most notably after her twins were born.
Also heard frequently are the Tuckers. Patriarch Mike is another farmer in the area. Also heard is his son Roy Tucker, the father of Kate Madikane's oldest daughter, Phoebe, and his estranged wife, Hayley, the mother of their daughter, Abbie. Mike's wife, Betty, had died quite suddenly, and after a sufficient time of mourning, Mike remarried a woman named Vickie.
Kate's eldest daughter, Phoebe, now studying at Oxford, has a very pronounced bond with her half-siblings, Noluthando and Sipho Madikane, especially when the former made a visit to Ambridge from South Africa.
Phoebe, who had been enamored with South Africa, had made a visit to see her mother and her stepfather, Lucas (who got on wonderfully with Phoebe), who had been living in Johannesburg at that time, and it was then that she had bonded with Noluthando and Sipho.
Phoebe, quite understandably, fears that their mother would abandon Noluthando and Sipho as she had done to Phoebe herself so many times, hence they are close in that way.
As it turned out, true to form, Kate had had yet another affair, and sure enough, abandoned her children.
Lucas, finally having had enough of her continual infidelity, finally kicked her out of his life and divorced her.
At present, he is raising his children on his own, with the aid of his parents.
In spite of the divorce, he cares for Phoebe very much, and he still encourages his children's bonding with their half sister.
Caroline Sterling (played by Sara Coward) was also a very major player on the story. She was multiple married, and had several paramours, but she was also a very major part of the community, being the owner of Grey Gables. When Sara Coward died in February of 2017, so did Caroline. She had died at the Sterling's second-home in Italy.
Another family was the Tregorran family. Carol (Eleanor Bron) was a successful businesswoman who was originally married to a man named Charles Grenville, but after his death, she married John Tregorran, and had a daughter, Anna-Louise, herself a solicitor, in Birmingham. Carol left Ambridge for a time, but returned in 2014, after John's death.
One of the few minorities in the Ambridge area was Usha Gupta (Souad Faress), a solicitor who worked in Felpersham, and was married to Alan Franks, Ambridge's current vicar. He replaced Janet Fisher, the area's first female vicar.
Usha's most notable contact from her own family (the most of whom did not like the idea that she would become a barrister, much less leave Coventry to live in Ambridge) is her auntie Satya Khanna (Jamilla Massey), who often brings her niece, who was notoriously inept as a cook, a care package filled with lots of good food. She also brings advice and offers her niece a shoulder to cry on.
When she first arrived, she had been the target of racial violence by a Neo-Nazi biker gang, which Roy Tucker had been tied into. Two of the bikers, named Spanner Bridges (due to his weapon of choice being a wrench, or "spanner") and Craven, were taken to court and were found guilty. Craven pled guilty, and was sentenced lesser than his cohort, who was sent to prison for a long time, and his precious bike had to be sold and the proceeds given to Usha.
She and Shula Hebden-Lloyd, who had once been good friends, were now arch-enemies (due to Shula being taken advantage by a mutual paramour, Dr. Richard Locke), always trying to one-up each other.
After the Locke affair was exposed, he left town. This allowed Usha to tell off Shula with great relish!
When Locke returned recently, Shula made another go for him, as her marriage to Alistair was in malaise, but he, wisely, turned her down.
Eventually, Shula and Alistair returned to one another and they were back to normal.
Some years later, Shula and Alistair divorced, irrevocably this time, and she now devotes her time to the stables, which she owned, and picking up the pieces of her life after Alistair.
As a result of Usha, a Hindu, marrying the town's vicar, Alan Franks, Shula resigned from the church's board, and disapproved of his marrying her arch enemy.
While Shula and Alan are friends once again in spite of it, she and Usha are still enemies and perhaps always will be.
And then, there is the always aggravating but well-meaning Lynda Snell, MBE (Carole Boyd)!
Lynda, married to a man named Robert Snell, a former IT worker who lost his job, he does a booming trade in DIY jobs, is a highly charged but good intentioned busybody (people usually get out of the way, fast, whenever they see her coming along on her ever-trusty bicycle). She is widely known and very notorious for her yearly attempts to cast everyone in Ambridge in a Christmas show (except in 2020, during the pandemic), as well as her many crusades to improve the village and land.
She often drives the rest of Ambridge mad with her escapades, though, more often than not, her efforts end up being successful, but it doesn't deter her from her crusades!
She is also known for her extremely outlandish (to say the least) choices for animals.
She owns Llamas among other odd choices, including goats. One was named Wolfgang, who died, and the survivors, Constanza and their cria, Salieri.
With her boundless energy, grand ideas, and, despite her annoying pushiness, she truly had a genuine love for the town. This has made her a well-known stalwart of the village, although this doesn't make her any less annoying!
However, despite her overly annoying nature and continually outlandish attempts of bettering the community, the citizens had thought highly enough of her to put her name up for being named MBE, which she received in 2021
She is driven by her causes, and has gained a kindred spirit in Kate Madikane, much to the horror of her mother, Jennifer.
The rest of Ambridge sees this as an unusual pairing, but it works, as both Kate and Lynda feel they are surrounded by people who weren't as creative as they were!
Robert and Lynda have no children of their own. Robert has two other daughters, Coriander, nicknamed Caz, and Leonie, called Len, by his first wife, Bobo.
Caz, the younger, was level-headed and nicer. She is the mother of Oscar with her partner, Justin Bamford. Lynda could annoy Caz with unsolicited mothering tips, but aside from that, she gets on beautifully with her stepmother, and her visits to Ambridge were often more pleasant.
Len was spoilt, at least in Lynda's opinion! Len is currently dating James Bellamy, Lilian's son, and their relationship is very volatile. One minute they can be so sickeningly lovey-dovey to the point of nausea, and the next minute, they could be having a viciously intense row, which could be quite explosive.
James had once been with Roy Tucker's sister, Brenda, but she now hates him for letting her down when she needed him.
James and Len also have a child named Mungo (she wanted to name him, Mowgli, but James was very much against it).
Coming from the community of Sunningdale, Robert and Lynda currently live in the stately and large Ambridge Hall, which was once owned by Christine Barford's late aunt, Laura Archer.
Lynda serves in the same capacity Laura herself did when the former lived in Ambridge Hall.
Other characters also include the Grundys, who serve as Comic relief, but also serve as a family who are always persevering in spite of the odds.
There are also many characters who are often spoken of but don't have any dialogue. These characters are called silent characters. The most notable of these were Marjorie Antrobus, a widowed former military wife who was very popular with the community and was always involved in some way or another though on a far less intrusive basis than Lynda operates.
She was also on a friendly basis with most of the younger people in Ambridge, and served as a caring landlady to Roy and Hayley Tucker and his daughter, Phoebe.
Another silent character was Freda Fry, a pub cleaner and gardener who was also much beloved in the village.
She was also known for her wonderful cooking and that made her popular at not just the Bull, but all over Ambridge.
When the actress who played Marjorie, Margot Boyd, passed away, so had Marjorie (the character was revealed to be dead in August 2008; Boyd died in May of the same year); Freda had died in 2015 during the Great Ambridge Flood. She had died of pneumonia.
The Great Ambridge Flood storyline was one of the more successful stories that had occurred on this long-running show.
Many of the stories are timely as the show also is an educational show for farmers who deal with agricultural issues at the same time as the Archers. Unlike most soaps, radio OR TV, the show is known for its topicality, which would occur at the same time as the broadcasts.
What also made this series unique is that the actors of the show also worked at other jobs which allowed them to be on the show whenever possible.
The series celebrated its sixty-eighth year on the air in 2018, making it one of the longest-running shows on radio.
Alumni[]
Some actors on the Archers have become well-known on other shows or were already well- established in the business when they joined the show.
One of them is actress Kellie Bright. She was one of the actresses who played the continually troublesome Kate Aldridge Madikane from 1995-2004.
Since 2013, Kellie is seen and is widely well known as Linda Carter, the always flashy but very maternal landlady of the Queen Vic, on the long-running UK soap, EastEnders.
Another Archers actress, Annette Badland (who occasionally visits Ambridge as the poisonous Hazel Woolley, the money-mad stepdaughter of Peggy Woolley) also played Aunt Babe Smith, the vivacious but extremely scheming aunt of Kellie Bright's character's husband on EastEnders.
Simon Williams (Justin Elliott, the current forever partner of Lilian Bellamy) is perhaps best known for his long-running role of troubled older son James Bellamy on the classic 1970's series, Upstairs, Downstairs.