is being plugged on Front Row as I typo, as having been “meticulously researched”. Actually it is apparently quite sensible.
The bollix it is.
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As a 15 Minute Drama it might actually have worked - it would have been quite unpleasant but it might have had something to say. My problems with it are primarily because it was imposed on an ongoing character. (Possibly two, if you think that Rob was originally intended for something else.)
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A really decent member of the board, known personally to myself & others, stopped listening to TA over the Rob/Helen storyline as she said that it was so far fetched - Helen was surrounding by opportunities for help
She said that it did no service at all to the women who were being beaten up at home, with no-one to listen to, let alone believe them
Friends of mine became Archers listeners before the story started, & I couldn’t talk to them about it
Carinthia.xx
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That’s a shame, Carinthia. Might she start again at some point, or was that It with a capital I?
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Well
I have talked her through the difficulties she has Posting on Peets & she is in & out of The Cellar on a regular basis now, so who knows?
Carinthia.xx
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It would be grand if she did. And she would certainly be welcome here: nothing explodes here.
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I’ll have a chat to her about it.
Carinthia.xx
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I’ve blarped on incessantly about this storyline. How SO’C, & subsequently the BEEB, plugged it as something it wasn’t and how it came to dominate the whole programme.
I firmly believe that had it been written as anything from a one hour drama, to even a 6 x 1 hour mini series it could have been of interest. But the real time affect of slotting it into the 5 x 12m pw format, intermingled with other stores, the decision to rewrite personalities so they fitted in with the theme and it’s sheer slowness prevented that.
It’s a drama, it will have flaws, but this one made my blood boil tbh. But mostly due to SO’C’s all encompassing smugness.
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And incompetence.
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I’m not at all sure it would have worked in any format. It was an ugly story, filled with implausible plot twists with highly unattractive protagonists. There surely can’t be a large audience who enjoy unrelenting psychological and physical abuse entirely devoid of light and shade.
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I can’t say that I mind unrelating psychological and physical abuse that much when it’s Helen on the receiving end 
Deplorable, but there you are.
In terms of the programme as a whole, though, it was very poorly done.
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