… and on another obsession. Pip’s, well tbh Daisy Badger’s voice … I sometimes try to be reasonable and not simply believe my own publicity so I listened to last night’s show again. The show when Pip set up the mugging of her Gran for funds.
My goodness. She pulled out every bizarre noise in her repertoire yesterday. Every single one. The over-pronounced 't’s, the singy inflections, the word extensions, the odd over-use of Toby’s name. The very final few of words before the tum-tee tums at the end provided the ultimate version of “cattoo”.
All that is ignoring the story which I can only hope is a final build up to her getting the comeuppance the character so richly deserves.
She simply HAS (how pleasant to be able to stress a word by use of capitals, btw, without it being abruptly modded) to take a sabbatical somewhere after a monumental pratfall and return afresh with someone not called Daisy Badger on the cast list
The thing that gets me whenever I hear the programme is how petulant all the young people sound - like a teenager who’s just been told it can’t have a new car. Even when that’s not the mood of the character.
Yes, omni-petulance. Lily doesn’t sound petulant particularly, mind, but there’s nevertheless a lot about her that invites a hearty punch in the bracket. imo.
Forgetting Pip - ha! as if - Tom is one of the worst. He’s meant to be in his thirties yet sounds barely post-adolescent. Mind you, the lines he is given do rather foster that impression.
Pip Archer: Daisy Badger. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Tom Archer: William Troughton. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Toby Fairbrother: Rhys Bevan. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Rex Fairbrother: Nick Barber. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Lily Pargetter: Katie Redford. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Freddie Pargetter: Jack Firth. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Chris Carter: Wilf Scolding. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Josh Archer: Angus Imrie. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
Dan Archer: Will Howard. Selected for the rôle by Sean O’Connor.
The extraordinary thing is that last time he was working for The Archers he claims to have chosen Barry Farrimond for Ed, Felicity Jones for Emma, and Joanna van Kempen for Fallon, each a good actor, each with an individual voice. This time he has chosen a really duff lot of clones. Is he going deaf, perhaps?
You’re right, they tend that way. They have each spent a lifetime feeling put-upon; the two males with reason, given Emma’s behaviour, and Emma just because she is that sort of person, never content with what she has got, grass always greener.
But there is no difficulty telling any of them from all the other actors, is there.
Can we hold him responsible for YokelChris? He was supposed to have buggered off a year ago, but clung on to make sure no one did anything untoward with the Titchynob saga post stabnight (like introducing a modicum of credibility). It seems more likely that he wanted to ditch the character altogether, since he stopped appearing almost as soon as he took over.
As to Ed, Emma and Fallon, I reckon he was (not for the only time) a tad economical with the truth; he was there in a relatively junior role for a year or so as maternity cover, so would he have been in a position to hire and fire?
Ed, Emma and Fallon spoke for the first time in April (the first two) and in August 2000 and Sean O’Connor left during 1999, so I don’t see why he would not already have hired new people this time round as well (if he did indeed hire those three, about which there is little evidence; he is also claimed to have “re-introduced several popular characters including” Kenton, Adam and Lilian, who respectively reappeared in August 2000 briefly, April 2001 and March 2003).
He hired Troughton for Tom without telling Tom Graham and kept that appointment under his hat from April 2014 until November 2014, so given that Chris Carter also last spoke in April 2014 it seems entirely possible that the then-actor William Sanderson-Thwaite simply didn’t know that someone else had been given the part, just as Tom Graham didn’t know.