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Actor retires from radio soap role she's played since before Elizabeth II was Queen [1]
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Date: 2022-08-09
June Spencer, 103, has announced she is to retire from her role in radio’s longest running “daily drama” — soap opera. She is the last surviving original cast member of BBC’s Home Service, now Radio 4 show. The Archers. The first episode was broadcast on 1 January 1951. Elizabeth became Queen on the death of her father overnight but officially when he was found dead at 7.30 on the morning of February 6, 1952. June did take a break from the part for several months in the 1960s so I suppose they are about evens.
Spencer said: “In 1950, I helped to plant an acorn. It took root and in January 1951 it was planted out and called The Archers. “Over the years it has thrived and become a splendid great tree with many branches. But now this old branch, known as Peggy, has become weak and unsafe so I decided it was high time she ‘boughed’ out, so I have duly lopped her.” www.theguardian.com/...
The Archers is one of those Peculiar British Institutions which probably 90% of British adults have been exposed to at least once. At one stage it was so well known that first aiders were told to use its theme tune, Barwick Green, to time chest compressions for restarting hearts.
The drama started as a “farming Dick Barton” to appeal to farmers in the prime 6.45 pm slot. Dick Barton had previously used the slot. Billed as “an everyday story if country folk”, it got the full BBC Reithian treatment, In line with the BBC’s motto, it set out to “educate, inform and entertain”. The BBC employed agricultural experts to ensure authenticity. In the early 1950s British agriculture was increasing production through mechanisation and the use of fertilizers. So an early storyline centered on a farmer replacing his shire horses with a tractor. Today a topic might be having “set aside” uncultivated land to provide wildlife habits and how to get the subsidies.
That aspect makes it sound rather specialist but the appeal to the general public was the family and inter-family relationships. The size of its audience gave rise to a legend.
One of the earliest characters, Grace Archer was played by Ysanne Churchman. Famously her character was killed off in a tragic fire. The timing of her death is the stuff of legend, coinciding with the launch of the UK’s first commercial TV channel ITV, on 22 September 1955. Myth has it that her demise was timed to distract from the ITV launch, but, according to Ysanne, the reverse was true. It was an attempt to bury the death of Grace Archer as producers assumed many more would be glued to the ITV opening.
Having a fairly large ensemble cast means several storylines can be interwoven. Restricting the main action to a rural community limits the number of other characters you need, In TV terms it also means that you don’t have all those “background artists” walking back and forward in a city set scene. So it’s no surprise the BBC’s longest running TV soap is the Welsh language Pobol Y Cwm, originally on BBC Wales and now on S4C, (Sianel Pedwar Cymru = Channel 4 in Wales.) is set in a rural Welsh community. A popular commercial ITV1 evening soap is “Emmerdale”, previously “Emmerdale Farm”. In that the “plane crashing into minibus” episode is notorious for the way they changed the cast and characters.
The popularity of these shows is another British peculiarity. In the 18tb century the Industrial Revolution started. With canal and later rail transport feeding the growing factories, the population moved rapidly from predominantly rural to predominantly urban. It induced a certain folk nostaligia for a simpler rural era. Current manifestations include the continuing aspiration to “retire to a rose covered cottage in the country” and the Welsh concept of Hiraeth.
The basic idea of the show was adapted for broadcast in Afghanistan
The British Government has spent and invested millions in Afghanistan, on troops, infrastructure and a considerable number of missiles. It has now emerged that it deployed a secret and perhaps more effective weapon in its mission to win hearts and minds in the battle against the Taliban: an Afghan version of The Archers. New Home, New Life, first broadcast in 1994, swaps Ambridge for the fictitious village of Bar Killi, and storylines about organic pigs and rural affairs (extra-marital, usually) for tales of forced marriages, land mines and opium cultivation. Partly developed by producers of the Radio 4 soap, and broadcast on the World Service, it soon became a hit, at its peak drawing audiences of more than 35 million people. Now a previously restricted government document has revealed the extent to which it was funded by the UK as part of a global policy of using soap opera to influence audiences.
I gather June Spencer’s character is not being immediately killed off in classic soap plots, She is “taken to the main Barsetshire care home”. This gives plenty of opportunity for “I’m rather worried about Peggy” dialog. [for those unfamilar, that was a “Mrs Dale’s Diary” reference] It also gives them a chance to explore what happens to an increasingly frail matriarch and the consequences of her illness and death on her suvivors. Almost sounds like the BBC preparing its audience to respond to Operation London Bridge.
It also gives June the chance to make guest appearances, Would help her pay her fuel bills!
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