Crass musical choices and utterly unbelievable Archers scripts could bring out the curmudgeon in anybody
*Men's Hour* 5 Live | iPlayer
*Breakfast Show* Radio 1 | iPlayer
*The Archers* Radio 4 | iPlayer
*Ambridge Extra* Radio 4 Extra | iPlayer
There comes a stage in most adults' lives when they tip past critical thinking into unalloyed curmudgeonliness. The sheer number of things that annoyed me on the radio last week leave me wondering if I've reached this point. *Men's Hour* on 5 Live had an enlightening and important discussion on men's mental health, sensitively handled by Tim Samuels. But for some bizarre reason, one of the first-person testimonies charting the course of a serious nervous breakdown was set to a late-70s pop song. In this case, it was the Cure's Boys Don't Cry, a choice so jaw-droppingly obvious it was the aural equivalent of being slapped around the face with an anti-subtlety fish. So while Lee from Merseyside was talking about not being able to look anyone in the eye, or sitting in his office with the lights turned off, refusing to talk to his boss, Robert Smith was blithely singing away in the background. It was the one duff note in an otherwise excellent and moving programme.
Music was also annoying me over on Radio 1. I used to listen to Chris Evans on the *Breakfast Show* as a teenager and remember being wildly impressed by his inventiveness and on-air chutzpah. Evans perfected the "zoo" format pioneered by Steve Wright, and everything since has been a pale imitation.
Now we have Nick Grimshaw and mind-numbingly awful audience participation games, including "Generation Lame", where callers have to remember a succession of noises in order to ensure Grimshaw doesn't play a rubbish song. More often than not, the caller fails to emulate enough sound effects, so Grimshaw plays a rubbish song. Forgive my naivety, but wouldn't it be better for Radio 1 to try to play good music all the time, rather than inventing a spurious way of subjecting us to dross?
Then there's *The Archers*. I've listened to The Archers for the best part of three decades and have robustly defended it whenever anyone has had the temerity to dismiss it as a boring irrelevance (for every anaerobic digester, I say, there has been an extramarital affair threatening to rip the village apart).
But now I fear they're losing me. These days, The Archers seems to be a mix of the dull (conversations about what is causing Nic's leg cramp) and the completely unbelievable (Matt sort of accidentally killing his own brother, then fleeing to Russia).
On Radio 4 Extra we're treated to the digital spin-off series *Ambridge Extra*, which appears to have been cobbled together by a group of scriptwriters who must either be on hallucinogenic drugs or attempting to pull off a brilliant satire on an unsuspecting public, in the manner of Chris Morris's Brass Eye.
Over the past few weeks, Ambridge Extra has continued to trail the fortunes of Matt Crawford and Brenda Tucker on a "business trip" to St Petersburg. Within minutes of her arrival, Brenda had shacked up with a dodgy Russian called Dmitry (and I thought Elona's cod-Polish accent was bad). Matt, meanwhile, lost all his money, fell in with the mafia and ended up sleeping on the streets.
The best storylines in The Archers have always been character-driven and plotted with skill and nuance over several episodes. That's what keeps listeners tuning in. Of late, the producers seem to have been desperate to Shake Things Up by inventing improbable narrative twists without putting in the necessary time to make us care about a character's development.
The addition of Ambridge Extra is an unwieldy confusion – major plot turns are revealed in this programme and then have to be referred to in a passing conversation on The Archers. I have neither the time nor inclination to listen to both, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. With the proliferation of the BBC's digital output, schedulers have to realise that more isn't always better. Sometimes it's just more – and more stuff you don't want to tune into at that. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 days ago.
*Men's Hour* 5 Live | iPlayer
*Breakfast Show* Radio 1 | iPlayer
*The Archers* Radio 4 | iPlayer
*Ambridge Extra* Radio 4 Extra | iPlayer
There comes a stage in most adults' lives when they tip past critical thinking into unalloyed curmudgeonliness. The sheer number of things that annoyed me on the radio last week leave me wondering if I've reached this point. *Men's Hour* on 5 Live had an enlightening and important discussion on men's mental health, sensitively handled by Tim Samuels. But for some bizarre reason, one of the first-person testimonies charting the course of a serious nervous breakdown was set to a late-70s pop song. In this case, it was the Cure's Boys Don't Cry, a choice so jaw-droppingly obvious it was the aural equivalent of being slapped around the face with an anti-subtlety fish. So while Lee from Merseyside was talking about not being able to look anyone in the eye, or sitting in his office with the lights turned off, refusing to talk to his boss, Robert Smith was blithely singing away in the background. It was the one duff note in an otherwise excellent and moving programme.
Music was also annoying me over on Radio 1. I used to listen to Chris Evans on the *Breakfast Show* as a teenager and remember being wildly impressed by his inventiveness and on-air chutzpah. Evans perfected the "zoo" format pioneered by Steve Wright, and everything since has been a pale imitation.
Now we have Nick Grimshaw and mind-numbingly awful audience participation games, including "Generation Lame", where callers have to remember a succession of noises in order to ensure Grimshaw doesn't play a rubbish song. More often than not, the caller fails to emulate enough sound effects, so Grimshaw plays a rubbish song. Forgive my naivety, but wouldn't it be better for Radio 1 to try to play good music all the time, rather than inventing a spurious way of subjecting us to dross?
Then there's *The Archers*. I've listened to The Archers for the best part of three decades and have robustly defended it whenever anyone has had the temerity to dismiss it as a boring irrelevance (for every anaerobic digester, I say, there has been an extramarital affair threatening to rip the village apart).
But now I fear they're losing me. These days, The Archers seems to be a mix of the dull (conversations about what is causing Nic's leg cramp) and the completely unbelievable (Matt sort of accidentally killing his own brother, then fleeing to Russia).
On Radio 4 Extra we're treated to the digital spin-off series *Ambridge Extra*, which appears to have been cobbled together by a group of scriptwriters who must either be on hallucinogenic drugs or attempting to pull off a brilliant satire on an unsuspecting public, in the manner of Chris Morris's Brass Eye.
Over the past few weeks, Ambridge Extra has continued to trail the fortunes of Matt Crawford and Brenda Tucker on a "business trip" to St Petersburg. Within minutes of her arrival, Brenda had shacked up with a dodgy Russian called Dmitry (and I thought Elona's cod-Polish accent was bad). Matt, meanwhile, lost all his money, fell in with the mafia and ended up sleeping on the streets.
The best storylines in The Archers have always been character-driven and plotted with skill and nuance over several episodes. That's what keeps listeners tuning in. Of late, the producers seem to have been desperate to Shake Things Up by inventing improbable narrative twists without putting in the necessary time to make us care about a character's development.
The addition of Ambridge Extra is an unwieldy confusion – major plot turns are revealed in this programme and then have to be referred to in a passing conversation on The Archers. I have neither the time nor inclination to listen to both, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. With the proliferation of the BBC's digital output, schedulers have to realise that more isn't always better. Sometimes it's just more – and more stuff you don't want to tune into at that. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 days ago.