The Archers recently returned to their recording studio at The Mailbox, Birmingham. The Radio 4 drama is being recorded and produced under special safety guidelines to ensure the well-being of cast and crew.
Editor, Jeremy Howe, reflects on the months during lockdown and looks ahead to the coming weeks:
Just as in the real world things have started to seem a little more normal, so too The Archers have started to converse with each other again.
It will be a gradual change - but already we are beginning to sound more like The Archers of old, and the storytelling is gathering pace.
We have started to return to our studio in Birmingham, which means we will be able to record and produce scenes more quickly, but we will also have to continue with some remote recording alongside this. We will of course be following guidance on safety for our cast and crew so we aren’t recording in the studio as we used to: there are ‘zones’ marked around mics so actors remain distanced and we’ll have far fewer people in the studio than usual. I once directed an Archers scene with over twenty five people clustered around one mic. That won’t happen again any time soon. Our cast are located across the country so we’ll also be mindful of local updates, paying close attention as the response to the pandemic continues.
Being asked to run The Archers is a bit like being asked to look after The Crown Jewels. Quintessentially British, it is beloved, our audience are passionate about it, and quite rightly they feel as if it is their Archers - and indeed it is. In other words as Editor you make every decision carefully, knowing it will be assessed by many. Then Coronavirus comes along blocking the path of this lean, mean precision engineered production.
It was immediately obvious that in lockdown both the tried and tested way of making The Archers - one that has been in place for decades - was impossible and that almost all of the stories we were planning couldn’t happen amidst a pandemic. However, we felt we owed it to our millions of loyal listeners that we should be there as a companion through troubling times. The show had to go on, but in order to do so we had to reinvent it. It has been an extraordinary piece of teamwork by the small band of producers, directors, production co-ordinators, studio managers, writers and actors who are proud to be The Archers, all with the single aim of being on air for listeners.
In aiming to deliver several episodes week in, week out under covid conditions we decided that intercut monologues between characters was the way forward. We knew it just wasn’t possible to have dialogue. Meanwhile the whole of society was going into a form of solitary confinement, and all of us were forced to lead simpler lives. Listening to recent scenes with Joy Horville, a gregarious Geordie, it is quite obvious she has barely had a real physical conversation in months. I think there are a lot of people whose experience of lockdown hasn’t been dissimilar to Joy’s. The Archers mirrors the way we lived through lockdown. Listeners wrote in to say how they’ve identified with moments like these and drawn comfort from them.
There have been many standouts for me: Radio Susan Carter, especially Sergeant Harrison’s moving interview about why he became a police officer; Freddie Pargetter’s anxiety as to how to respond to the letter from Lynda Snell thanking him for rescuing her from a burning Grey Gables; Tracy Horrobin winning the captaincy of the cricket club while actually playing cricket was no longer permitted. Recently listeners have heard things residents of Ambridge would never have said out loud or shared with a living soul: we have got inside the head of an alcoholic as we have explored Alice Carter’s troubled relationship with drink, we heard Tony Archer’s private moment of grief over the death of his son John. I think they have been Archers pure gold.
A handful of productions have recorded dialogue in recent months, leading some to ask why not on The Archers? As a continuing drama - which we passionately wanted to keep on the air - we did not have the flexibility of others. Those were mostly one off drama projects, or completely different types of programmes like weekly panel shows, not faced with the task of reshaping and re-planning months and months of work, let alone an unending number of episodes to deliver stretching out ahead of them. Those productions should of course be praised, but it is difficult to draw comparisons between them and The Archers.
Through September we are increasing the amount of dialogue in the show. Of course, our aim is to get back to The Archers as it was before the pandemic, but it will be step by gradual step. Just as for everybody else, dealing with coronavirus has been an enormous challenge - editorially and logistically.
We know how important The Archers is to our listeners, and just as many people have enjoyed hearing characters’ inner thoughts we know others have longed for the programme they know and love. We understand. We didn’t expect anything different from our passionate audience. The team is doing everything we can, and listeners have been starting to hear certain storylines being resumed as well as conversations between characters. We are working hard on even more of this, and boy are we looking forward to a well-earned pint at The Bull and a great Ambridge Christmas show to bring cheer and good tidings to us all after what will have been an extraordinary year.
Listen to The Archers on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
