Character Count – June 2020
The first full month of monologue episodes. This temporary period in The Archers history began with episodes featuring only two characters. As the weeks have gone by, a third character has been introduced to most episodes. We have gone from the weekly quota of 39 characters to 8, 10, 10, 11 characters during June. During June, in total, there have been 45 character appearances. POSITION CHARACTER EPISODES 1 Susan Carter 5 2 Ben Archer 4 = Helen Archer 4 4 Emma Grundy 3 = Kate Madikane 3 = Kirsty Miller 3 = Lilian Bellamy 3 8 Ed Grundy 2 = […]
DTD: 335 – Monologue malaise
I realise this is repetition but frankly the BBC have abandoned one of their most important wireless programmes to a bunch of amateurs rather than demonstrating what can be done and showing us how good they are it. Even if the sound quality was not perfect it might avoid the incompetence that the actors are currently being asked to read. There seems to be no intention of improving matters – the way of thinking has been locked in. Current Government politicians have views about the BBC and the way they have failed the Archers faithful at this critical time […]
DTD: 334 Graham Seed joins Dumteedum to discuss the week in Ambridge and The Pargetter Triptych.
The Ghost of Lower Loxley returns to the airwaves, well a podcast, as Graham Seed, probably best known as either Mr Trevitt with the Durrells in Corfu or Dick Thornton in Brookside joins Keri and Roifield to discuss his new outing in The Pargetter Triptych and his long time alter ego, Nigel Pargetter. And Graham Seed did do an interview for Jen Carr back in 2011 – so I think this might explain his slight confusion! Hot news is that Keri is now permanent and you can all fall in love with her. And the cruising book was for Keri Davies […]
DTD: 333 The Bridge Farm monologues
DTD number 333, that means we are halfway to the devil number. So we are all half devils! I was musing about The Archers and “Just a Minute” and realised our favourite docu-drama had become a complete failure as a contestant. Hesitation – it completely ran out of new episodes. Repetition then set in as old episodes were raided to fill the gap. Finally it became deviation central as all pretence at being a continuing docu-drama since 1951 was abandoned in favour of this modern thought-leadership nonsense in place of being a proper drama involving two or more people. […]
DTD: 332 – The lockdown in Ambridge 2 weeks in and we say goodbye to Lucy
We have had Lucy’s week in Ambridge start the podcast and Roifield delivers his thanks for six years of Lucy, her comic brilliance and her insight into the human race with an incredible ability to articulate aspects of human behaviour and psyche which might otherwise be overlooked. Roifield also admits that Lucy has improved his professionalism and also perhaps to improve him as a human being. Her contribution to the DumTeeDum community has made it what it has become and the achievements of the community – meetups, public meetings and so on are due to Lucy V Freeman – who […]
DTD: 331 – Do you like The Ambridge monologues?
Keri Warbis returns for another week and relates her difficulties with the new format, taking at least three attempts to absorb the content of The Archers. Roifield says that the new format exposes the writing and the actors to greater scrutiny as there is not a huge amount the director can interpose on the words and the way that the various actors are delivering them plus the lack of voice changes makes listening more difficult than normal as we no longer get the instant reaction of the participants in each scene as we would with the usual interplay. Following […]