Archive: 2007-12-19
Seven o’clock
Seven o’clock is the absolute worst time to arrive home. I’ve just missed the half-hour comedy slot on Radio 4; to add insult to injury, the following programme is the everyday story of farming folk, patronising yokel accents, ham-fistedly obvious attempts at shoehorning in every conceivable demographic group, and godawful acting that is The Archers. It’s a soap opera that metastasised out of postwar farming propaganda, and now it’s unstoppable. Getting rid of it would probably raise a greater outcry than Disestablishment or republican revolution. It would probably even get people out to vote in numbers that parliamentary elections could never attain.