This week will be* the last written by Joanna Toye, who is retiring from The Archers. She remembers her long career on the production and writing team – and explains why for one scene only she brought Phil Archer back to life.
(*probably - see below!)
From the minute Jill changed her mind about Hadley Haugh at Christmas, David had clearly been fighting his gut instincts. So by the time we got to this week, I had this vision of David blundering on like Macbeth. OK, he wasn’t going to run through Justin Elliott with a pitchfork (shame!) but he was certainly tormented, so wound in to the move by Ruth and Pip (a budding Lady M?) that he felt he had no option but to go along with it.
Though there’d been much talk of the distant past and Dan, I also felt than the person missing from David’s thoughts was his father. Add to that lack of sleep (from the lambing, but Macbeth again) and a carelessly discarded toy farm. I suddenly had the idea that David could hear Phil in his head, and that this would crystallise all his doubts. I’d written the millennium episode where Phil handed over the farm. Surely the recording must still be in the archives? Could Phil speak again?
The answer was yes, and I hope for listeners it was powerful and believable. It just shows that within the supposed constraints of a soap, there’s always room to try something different.
Deep feelings
It was an especially poignant week to write, because David’s deep feelings for Brookfield are very much mine for The Archers. Over 35 years, it’s been pretty much all I’ve ever known; not just my working life, but my life. Corny, yes, but the Archers have been like a family to me – with the advantage that I don’t actually have to spend Christmas cooped up with them or squabble with them over my inheritance.
More than anyone, the actors have seen me morph from a shy production secretary to what’s euphemistically called a veteran writer and producer, via every job in the production office. Sean O’Connor is my fifth editor, not counting temporary ones, acting ones, interregnums and the months when I did it myself after Vanessa Whitburn’s serious car accident. I’ve seen many people come and go… and, as with Sean, in some cases come back again.
When Graham Harvey joined the writing team, I explained the sound effects to him, and saw his face light up as he said ‘So I can have Colonel Danby on a bicycle?’ I typed the letter to Simon Frith telling him his trial script was ‘being considered’. Thank heavens he was ‘considered’ suitable – where would the programme be without him?.
My first memory of Mary Cutler is of her commandeering the editor’s office to feed her baby daughter, who’d been brought in mid-script meeting. What else would you expect from a writer trumpeted as one of then editor William Smethurst’s famous cohort of ‘left-wing feminists’?
Don’t get me started… there’s just too much. Like the time when I efficiently (I thought) rang Tim Bentinck [David Archer] with his bookings at 9.30 in the morning, not knowing his head had barely hit the pillow after the opening night of a show he was in – shall we say he wasn’t thrilled; auditioning for the fourth Dan Archer, and realising that one of the actors had actually appeared in Casablanca; directing the car crash in which Mark Hebden died – and still feeling sick when I remember the tinkle of glass after the impact as (I imagine) the smashed headlight fell out before the sickening silence; hearing the words I’d written for Peggy, sitting with Jack before he died, so brilliantly brought off the page by June Spencer.
35 years – where’s it all gone? In a flash, but only thanks to wonderful, gifted, generous colleagues, past and present, who’ve made it all possible.
Is it possible to leave the Archers? I have left twice before – I didn’t get very far. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s not even advisable. But it’s time for me to try…
Joanna Toye is an Archers scriptwriter and former senior producer.
