The Archers is the world's longest running radio soap opera, one fifteen-minute episode having been transmitted each weekday on the BBC Light Programme and subsequently the BBC Home Service (now BBC Radio 4) since 1 January 1951. An "everyday story of countryfolk", it is set in the fictional Midlands village of Ambridge close to Borchester, the county town of Borsetshire: an imaginary shire situated in vague proximity to the real city of Birmingham in the West Midlands. Ambridge itself is sometimes said to be based upon the village of Inkberrow in Worcestershire.
Other locations often referred to in the stories include local landmark Lakey Hill, the neighbouring village of Penny Hassett and the cathedral city of Felpersham. Its theme tune is Barwick Green, a 'maypole dance' from the suite My Native Heath, written in 1924 by the Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood.
Originally produced with collaborative input from the Ministry of Agriculture, it was conceived as a means of disseminating information to farmers and smallholders to help increase productivity in the post-war years of rationing and food shortages. The programme was hugely successful; at the height of its popularity it was estimated that 60% of adult Britons were regular listeners.
A recurring theme over the years has been the resentment of the working-class Grundy family towards the middle-class Archers, but the series has moved inexorably with the times and now deals with a wide range of contemporary rural problems including illicit affairs and drug abuse. However one of the show's enduring charms is its ability to make absorbing stories out of everyday, small scale concerns, such as the possible closure of the village shop, rather than the large scale and rather improbable events that form the plots of many soap operas.
The actor Norman Painting has played the character of Phil Archer continuously ever since the first trial series in 1950. The decision by the script writers to schedule an episode in which Phil's first wife, Grace, was killed in a fire on the launch day of independent television was widely seen as a spoiling operation by the BBC. The emotional response of listeners to news of Grace's death inspired an episode of Hancock's Half Hour that featured a fictional soap, The Bowmen, parodying the series.
In 1994, the BBC World Service in Afghanistan began broadcasting Naway Kor, Naway Jwand ("New Home, New Life"), an everyday story of countryfolk with built-in bits of useful information. Although the useful information was more likely to concern unexploded landmines than the latest modern farming techniques, the inspiration and model of Naway Kor, Naway Jwand was The Archers. [1]External links:
