The Archers - BBC Radio 4
All in the Mind - BBC Radio 4
The Archers does not come readily to mind as a ‘must listen’ in my book.
But a current storyline is proving compulsive.
Alice is struggling with alcoholism. Her husband Chris has had enough and has taken their newborn baby Martha back to his parents with him.
There was the showdown at the christening where Alice got drunk and nearly dropped Martha.
There was another showdown at the shop where Alice tried to buy vodka and was refused by her mother-in-law. The episode ends with the ugly smash of shattering glass. Alice has thrown a brick through the window.
No, her mother-in-law won’t press charges but we are left with another right cliff hanger when the phone rings and guess who is on the other end… it’s social services.
Confession: I’m now hooked.
When all our worlds have shrunk to the size of a child’s snow globe, somebody else’s fictional story can shake up the humdrum.
Not least because of old Jazzer who calls a big digging implement a spade and tells Alice on the morning after the brick through the window episode that she can stick her sorry right back where it came from.
This brings us neatly to All in the Mind, as presenter Claudia Hammond asks can soap operas like The Archers help us psychologically.
Real diehard fans blog and tweet and even write academic papers about The Archers.
There’s a group called the Academic Archers who have Zoom meetings about it.
What do we gain psychologically from soap operas, was the question asked in All in the Mind.
Contributor Callum’s nan has dementia. What she remembers are the characters and storylines from back in the 1960s – but it’s a connect between them.
Jane turned to alcohol after a period of depression.
“It stopped me killing myself, that was why I drank,” she told Claudia Hammond.
“Alice wants to feel the way she feels when she’s had a drink. Until she can resolve that battle, I don’t think she’ll know where she’s going.”
Helen wanted to turn the radio off because she couldn’t take the misery … she too had a difficult relationship with alcohol at one time.
A psychology professor Dara Greenwood told the programme that our brains are hardwired to be drawn to people’s stories … fictional or real life.
Also escapism has drawn people in during pandemic – it gives you another focus, another interest to keep you moving forward.
