UNDERNEATH THE ARCHERS

‘As hilarious, charming, eccentric, informative, addictive and delightful as the show itself’ Stephen

Fry

Much-loved radio drama The Archers has been at the heart of British life for over seventy years, and for more than three decades, scriptwriter Graham Harvey was the man behind the show’s farming storylines, writing over 600 episodes and crafting some of its most memorable moments: the Great Flood, the trashing of Brian’s GM crop, the loss of the Grundy family farm.

In Underneath The Archers, Graham interweaves personal memories of these moments with extracts from the scripts he created, offering behind-the-scenes details of how key characters and plotlines were developed, keeping pace with the real changes taking place in village and farm life. Read on below for an extract from the book.

I’d been writing scripts for the show for more than twelve years when Tony Parkin decided to retire as Farm Minister for Ambridge, or ‘agricultural story editor’ as the BBC liked to call him. Though there were tedious parts to the job, I reckoned this would be an opportunity to influence the direction of the show.

As a scriptwriter I’d been devising a lot of my own farming stories, though most had to start and finish in my own week of episodes. If I took on the agriculture job, there’d be the chance to develop bigger stories across all four Ambridge farms. The other writers would be feeding in story ideas too, but for the four farming families at least, my stories were likely to get priority.

By this time, Vanessa Whitburn was running the programme. I’d worked with her during her earlier time on the show when she’d been an assistant producer. Since then, she’d spent a year as producer of the TV series Brookside before returning to Ambridge as editor. I knew she’d enjoyed the farming stories in my scripts. I assured her that if I were agricultural editor, there’d be a lot more stories like that in the show.

She had one reservation. I’d made no secret of my support for organic farming so, not unreasonably, she wanted my word I wouldn’t try to use the show as a propaganda vehicle. As she reminded me, there were BBC impartiality rules to be considered.

I’ll be honest, this always seemed like a nonsense to me. Political impartiality, of course, but in a drama about farming? The Archers’ success had been built on creating a fictional community of small, family farms. It was the BBC itself that helped undermine this structure by using the programme to promote the government’s rural agenda, which was to encourage the spread of large, mechanised farms, where human skills were replaced by machines and chemicals. Where was BBC impartiality when characters were reciting Ministry of Agriculture press releases?

I didn’t actually say this to Vanessa, though. I assured her that of course there’d be no bias for or against any particular farming system. We already had an organic farm in the series, Bridge Farm, run by Pat and Tony Archer. Obviously, they’d stick up for organics, but I’d make sure there were equally robust arguments on the other side from farmers like Brian Aldridge, who practised what he liked to call ‘scientific farming’.

To be honest, I was perfectly happy with these rules. Technical arguments on organic versus conventional agriculture didn’t make great drama. Hopefully I’d find rather more interesting ways of challenging the farming status quo.

Brookfield Farm was the key to everything. Godfrey Baseley had set up Dan and Doris at the centre of the drama, the very heart of the community. Two generations on, Ruth and David Archer were now running the place. While there might be other dramas happening in their lives, given the opportunity, I was determined to evoke the spirit of that 1950s fireside whenever we went to Brookfield.

Here’s an early attempt. It’s a sunny Sunday morning in June and Ruth’s having a lazy breakfast. It’s her thirty-fourth birthday and later, in the field, there’s hay to be made.

INT. BROOKFIELD KITCHEN. SUNDAY 10AM

DAVID You’ve got butter on your chin.

RUTH Oh have I? Look I don’t want to rush you, but it’s ten o’clock.

DAVID So?

RUTH Should you go and see what the troops are up to?

DAVID I know what they’ll be up to.

RUTH Yeah?

DAVID Eddie’ll be swearing at the baler because he can’t get it set up right. It’ll take him at least an hour.

RUTH Tricky job though.

DAVID And all the time Bert’ll be telling him what he ought to be doing. Which’ll slow up the process even more.

RUTH Isn’t it about time we gave up small bales?

DAVID We don’t make that many.

RUTH Even so is it worth all the hassle?

At this point nine-year-old Pip enters with a birthday card she’s made for her mum. It’s a picture of her daddy feeding hay to the farm’s Hereford bull. Her picture includes a small hay bale. Following parental compliments on her artistic skills, Pip exits the scene.

DAVID Pip’s got it right about small bales too. Sometimes they’re more convenient.

RUTH You sure it’s not just nostalgia?

DAVID As if.

RUTH Golden days of childhood. Tea out in the hay field. All that stuff.

DAVID Listen, all I remember is the damn stuff getting down my pants and itching like billy-o.

RUTH Big event, wasn’t it? In those days. Hay-making.

DAVID Even more so in Dad’s time. You want to hear him going on about it when he was a lad. Pre-silage that was. In those days it was massive.

RUTH I suppose.

DAVID Like getting ready for the D-Day landings. Gran used to bake for over a week beforehand.

RUTH For all the casual workers?

DAVID On a Sunday afternoon they’d have had half the village up here. Anyone capable of lifting a bale.

RUTH And now it’s all gone.

DAVID It won’t come back either. We’re an urban culture these days.

RUTH Never mind, we’ve still got the old team. Bert, Eddie and Tom.

Later in the same episode there’ll be a scene in the hay field. Bert and Eddie will be arguing about how to fix the broken-down baler. The talk will be about obscure baler parts like knotters, tensioners and guide rings. Young Tom Archer will wonder why they’re relying on such an antique machine. David will be trying to stack bales in case of a sudden shower, even though there’s not a cloud in the sky.

At this point Ruth will drive the Land Rover into the field, bringing lunch. Everything will stop and there’ll be pasties, pizza slices, sandwiches and cans of beer among the sweet-smelling hay bales. Chatter and laughter will spill across the meadow. Community spirit will break out again in Ambridge and 5 million listeners will know that all’s well in the other England, just as 15 million did in the 1950s.

I loved days like this in Ambridge. A birthday, a family event, a moment aside from the unending engagement with nature that is life on the land. To me it seemed the perfect existence. Firstly, to belong, to be part of a close community, and at the same time to join in the great, all-encompassing adventure that is farming. In reality I don’t suppose it’s ever quite like this, but it was the life I imagined through my surrogate family at Brookfield.

While the writers and producers were constantly dreaming up momentous new stories, fresh tribulations to heap on the family, I was content, for the most part, to tell small tales of laughter and sorrow. It seemed to me the daily events this family encountered added up to a big enough drama in their own right.

Find Underneath The Archers on page 70