Radio Reviews: The Archers Podcast & Other Dramas

Archers Podcast First Anniversary

Emma Freud’s Archers podcast launched with George Grundy being sentenced for trying to frame Alice in the now-legendary Ambridge creek debacle. A year later, George is out, back in the village, and striding around like a criminal colossus. First stop: demanding a job at The Bull. Odd, thought he fancied himself as a social media mogul. Perhaps that’s pencilled in for later, once he’s finished bedding in — although judging by Amber, the jailbird influencer with a soft spot for felons, he’s already ticked that box.

Rehabilitation has not been evident so far but then, he’s been in prison, not a finishing school.

Freud marked the occasion with a podcast episode featuring George himself (actor Angus Stobie), plus Tamsin Greig, Julian Worricker and Sally Wainwright. They discussed his future in Ambridge, though George has already floated the idea of leaving — a plan promptly torpedoed by Amber, who presumably prefers her bad boys to remain local.

The programme missed a trick, of course. As I pointed out to anyone within earshot at the time, one of the most scandalous episodes in Ambridge history attracted precisely zero media attention. Not even the Borsetshire Echo stirred. As a former rural reporter, I’d have been camped outside the courthouse with a notepad and a thermos. And now that George is out, a discreet tip-off to the newsdesk could have sparked a fresh media frenzy. But alas, no one in Ambridge appears to own a hotline to the press.

Happy anniversary to the podcast. One year on, and still no headlines.

BBC Stories About Identity And Belonging

A string of recent productions share a common thread: belonging and identity. The stories encapsulate immigration, refugees, anti-semitism and historical guilt-tripping — themes woven through a quartet of extraordinarily connected dramas spanning vastly different settings.

Chekhov reimagined in 1948 Palestine; second-generation immigrants beginning their metamorphosis into those who seek to repel foreigners; a Soviet-era string quartet navigating anti-semitism and an asylum seeker and a British acquaintance both seeking redemption. At their heart, they share a common focus: human nature in all its frailty — its capacity for joy and magnanimity, but also its unpleasant and vindictive side.

The Yafa Cherry Orchard

I find a personal pull connecting me to Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Chekhovian adaptation. I’ve written before about my extraordinary dinner with a Palestinian family and finding myself a week later as a journalist pursuing one of those present who had committed a crime so grotesque he later received a 45-year prison sentence. He seemed charming, balanced and forgiving — how appearances can deceive.

The family in this Holy Mountain production are also personable and also resentful — not just of the land-grabbing Zionists looming into their lives, but of the British colonialists regarded as enablers. The drama transports Chekhov’s characters to Palestine in 1948, where olive groves stretch endlessly under a golden sun and the intoxicating aromas of citrus and herbs are infected with the black clouds of conflict.

The story translates effortlessly: a landowning family clinging to their estate as the world changes irrevocably around them.

We hear such observations as ‘The British build railways for their armies, then tell us they’re doing us a favour’; it’s a perfectly valid line and historically grounded though many people across the continents did rather enjoy the convenience of getting from place to place in hours rather than days.

The production features oud music and Middle-Eastern textures. And this one actually sticks to Chekhov’s own maxim about the gun going off — unlike the original.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
This International Arts production for BBC Radio 4 examines how cultural inheritance can curdle into prejudice. Marina Lewycka’s novel, set in Peterborough, is a comedy of manners wrapped around the immigrant experience — and this adaptation preserves its sharp edge.

Nadya and her sister Vira, daughters of Ukrainian immigrants, find themselves appalled when their widowed father, the eccentric 84-year-old Nikolai (a devotee of agricultural machinery, hence the title), falls for Valentyna — a voluptuous thirty-something newcomer with a taste for Western comforts and a visa about to expire.

Their outrage quickly turns hypocritical. Having grown up enjoying the stability their parents sought, they now regard fresh arrivals with suspicion, even contempt. It’s a deft portrayal of second-generation metamorphosis: from the displaced to the gatekeepers, from the excluded to the excluders.

One of the play’s sharper jokes lies in its sound: Nadya’s impeccable BBC English colliding with Valentyna’s gloriously mangled syntax. At first, Valentyna seems the archetypal gold-digger, but the story steadily exposes her bruised humanity and the grim realities she’s fleeing. By the end, the sisters’ moral superiority feels far less secure — as does ours.

The Coat

This afternoon drama targets a very specific shortcoming in the modern immigrant experience: the fragility of goodwill. The drama presents a successful asylum seeker, a man of principle, who discovers that his new British friend harbours an unwelcome secret.

Toby Jones plays a pilot who, years earlier, had flown a deportation flight. In a subsequent act of charity, his wife donates a coat to a refugee charity, unaware it contains £300 he’d forgotten in a pocket. The beneficiary tracks him down to return the money, intent on purging his own guilt after using it himself instead of sharing it with his asylum-seeking friend. It doesn’t quite turn out that way. The story offers a nuanced take on partial redemption.

A Reduced Listening production in association with Phosphoros Theatre.

Stormy Applause

Adapted from Rotislav Dubinsky’s memoir of the Borodin Quartet, this drama begins in the Soviet Union of the 1950s. The musicians couldn’t hardly get a gig because they were Jewish. Stalin’s death in 1953 occurred on the same day as Prokofiev’s, whose music was censored and adjusted to meet ideological demands, and was the staging post for the musicains’ accceptability.

The quartet achieved formal recognition when two Jewish members were replaced by Russians. Dubinsky remained, celebrated by the regime, performing for dignitaries and representing Soviet musical excellence abroad. Yet he felt deeply compromised, forced to navigate anti-semitism, censorship, and political manipulation while maintaining a deep love of works by maestros like Prokofiev. His memoir reveals a constant tension between public acclaim and private despair.

The quartet’s story is another variation on the theme: belonging denied, then grudgingly granted, but only at the price of erasure and compromise.