Ambridge is another country...
Mar. 21st, 2020 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomust... they continue to do things differently there. It's a week since I commented that coronavirus was slow arriving in Borsetshire, and still - as of last night - there is no sign of it. I am aware that The Archers is fictitious, but the fiction is that it happens in real time: when we are planning for Mother's Day, so is Ambridge. Although it is promarily a soap opera, part of its function - historically at least - is to convey agricultural news and guidance. No, seriously. I was sure I remembered, during the last foot and mouth outbreak, incidents and comments being patched in to episodes which gave every appearance of having been prepared far in advance of the need for them.
Well, perhaps I am imagining that, because there is no sign of any such thing happening now. Doubts about Phil and Kirsty's 'engagement' party (secretly, they plan to announce at it that they have already married) arise because Phil has become deeply unpopular in the village; residents continue to gather in the pub; the hospital functions without stress or question... Not only does no-one worry about contagion, incidents seem chosen for the way they emphasise the absence of the virus.
This is bad luck for the script department, who must have thought that they had come up with a massively exciting storyline (well, for values of massively exciting which are compatible with this 'everyday story of country folk') with the explosion at Grey Gables, Ambridge's posh hotel. Two characters hospitalised, one of them the person everyone loves to hate (apparently), and fault lines appearing all over the village - and their big moment is overshadowed by the virus (not to mention the threat that when all recorded episodes have been broadcast, the show itself will go off the air).
A week on from the explosion, Lynda is awake and talking (though when she asks for a mirror, Lillian has mysteriously left her compact at home). So that's one threat averted, although there are others. And in a gesture of reconciliation, the management of the pub have decided to abandon the rebranding which had divided the village, and become once more the Bull (instead of 'the B at Ambridge'). If only Brexit were so easily resolved.
Well, perhaps I am imagining that, because there is no sign of any such thing happening now. Doubts about Phil and Kirsty's 'engagement' party (secretly, they plan to announce at it that they have already married) arise because Phil has become deeply unpopular in the village; residents continue to gather in the pub; the hospital functions without stress or question... Not only does no-one worry about contagion, incidents seem chosen for the way they emphasise the absence of the virus.
This is bad luck for the script department, who must have thought that they had come up with a massively exciting storyline (well, for values of massively exciting which are compatible with this 'everyday story of country folk') with the explosion at Grey Gables, Ambridge's posh hotel. Two characters hospitalised, one of them the person everyone loves to hate (apparently), and fault lines appearing all over the village - and their big moment is overshadowed by the virus (not to mention the threat that when all recorded episodes have been broadcast, the show itself will go off the air).
A week on from the explosion, Lynda is awake and talking (though when she asks for a mirror, Lillian has mysteriously left her compact at home). So that's one threat averted, although there are others. And in a gesture of reconciliation, the management of the pub have decided to abandon the rebranding which had divided the village, and become once more the Bull (instead of 'the B at Ambridge'). If only Brexit were so easily resolved.
