Muwan Pelessa

Muwan Pelessa is the longest radio drama in Sri Lanka. It's first broadcast was in 1964.

Longest Radio Drama - The Archers

History

Starting on Whit Monday, 29 May 1950, and continuing with five episodes through that week,^[22] a pilot series created by Godfrey Baseley was broadcast to the English Midlands, as 'a farming Dick Barton'; it was decided to commission the series for a longer national run. In the pilot series the Archers' farm was not called Brookfield but Wimberton Farm.

Since 1 January 1951, five 15-minute episodes (since 1998, six 12½-minute episodes) have been transmitted across the UK each week, at first on the BBC Light Programme and subsequently on the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4). The original scriptwriters were Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason, who were also working on the series Dick Barton — Special Agent whose popularity partly inspired The Archers and whose slot in the schedules it eventually took. Originally produced with collaborative input from the Ministry of Agriculture, The Archers was conceived as a means of disseminating information to farmers and smallholders to help increase productivity in the post-World War II years of rationing and food shortages. The programme was hugely successful; at the height of its popularity it was estimated that 60% of adult Britons were regular listeners. It was used as propaganda to reinforce notions of Englishness, and to foster and inculcate notions of rebuilding post-war Britain. The programme's educational remit, and the involvement of the government, ended in 1972 but some long-term listeners still refer to "the Min. of Ag. bit" and it is true that the dialogue often contains more references to European farming subsidies, the buying habits of large supermarkets and the difficulties of marketing organic meat, than is usual in everyday conversation.

Tony Shryane MBE was the programme's producer from 1 January 1951 to 19 January 1979. Vanessa Whitburn has been the programme's editor since 1992. Since 2007, The Archers has been available as a podcast.^[23] As of February 2009^[update], it was the 49th most popular podcast on iTunes in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Death of Grace Archer

One of the most controversial Archers episodes was broadcast on 22 September 1955, the evening of the launch of the UK's first commercial television station, ITV. Phil and Grace Archer had been married just a few months earlier, and their blossoming relationship was the talk of the nation. However, searching for a story which would demonstrate some real tragedy among the increasingly unconvincing episode cliff-hangers, Godfrey Baseley had decided that Grace would have to die. It was explained to the cast as an "exercise in topicality." The scripts for the week of 19 September 1955 were both written, recorded, and broadcast on each day. On Thursday evening of that week, listeners heard Grace trying to rescue her horse, Midnight, from Brookfield stables, and the crash as a beam fell on her.^[24]

Whether the timing of the episode was a deliberate attempt to overshadow the opening night of the BBC's first commercial rival has been debated ever since. It was certainly planned some months in advance, but it may well be that the actual date of the death was changed during the scriptwriting stage to coincide with the start of ITV.^[25] Deliberate or not, the episode attracted widespread media attention, being reported by newspapers around the world.

This controversy has been parodied twice: in The Bowmans, an episode of the television comedy programme Hancock, and in the play and film The Killing of Sister George. On the 50th anniversary of ITV's launch, Ysanne Churchman, who played Grace, sent a congratulatory card to ITV, signed "Grace Archer".

In 1996, William Smethurst recounted a conversation with Baseley in which he reveals his real motivation for killing off Grace Archer: Churchman was encouraging the other actors to join a trade union.^[26]

[edit] Longevity

While The Archers is the longest running radio soap opera, it is not the longest running soap opera: the American soap opera Guiding Light started on radio in 1937 before moving to television in 1952. However, the final episode of Guiding Light is due to be broadcast on 18 September 2009.^[27]

The actor Norman Painting has played Phil Archer continuously since the first trial series in 1950. As a script writer, he has also written around 1,200 complete episodes, credited as "Bruno Milna", culminating in the 10,000th episode. According to Who's Who in The Archers 2008,^[28] episode 15,360 was to be broadcast on 1 January 2008.^[29] Episode 15,000 was broadcast on 7 November 2006.^[30]

[edit] Themes

A recurring theme has been the resentment of the working-class Grundy family towards the middle-class Archers. Labour politician Neil Kinnock in the 1980s jokingly called for The Archers to be retitled "The Grundys and their Oppressors".^[31] The series, however, now deals with a wide range of contemporary issues including illicit affairs, drug abuse, rape, and gay marriage — inviting criticism from conservative commentators such as Peter Hitchens^[32] that the series has become a vehicle for liberal and left-wing values and agendas, with characters behaving out of character to achieve those goals. However, one of the show's charms is to make absorbing stories out of everyday, small concerns, such as the possible closure of the village shop, the loss and rediscovery of a pair of spectacles,^[33] competitive marmalade-making, or nonsense such as a 'spile troshing' competition,^[34] rather than the large-scale and improbable events that form the plots of many soap operas. However, there are some dramatic storylines, such as the rape of Kathy Perks.^[35]

Sometimes mocked as a comfortable middle-class series with stereotypical comic yokels, the programme has nonetheless tackled many serious social issues. There have been, for instance: rural drug addiction; inter-racial relationships; direct action against genetically modified crops; family break-ups; and civil partnerships (gay marriage). Thus, given the (allegedly) middle-class nature of The Archers audience (and the generally unsympathetic treatment of characters such as Sid Perks, the adulterous pub landlord, who nevertheless has forcibly expressed views on the superiority of those aspects of "traditional morality" which suit him) The Archers may be seen as a counterpoise to the uniformly differently inclined lower-middle-class British newspapers. For instance, it seems likely that the intense discussion in Ambridge and the "real world" about whether the term "wedding" is appropriate for a civil partnership will make the use of the term much more frequent, and perhaps even more acceptable, in Middle England.

According to some of the actors, in its early days the show was used as a conduit for announcements from the Ministry of Agriculture, one actor reading an announcement almost verbatim to another. More recently the show has reacted within a day to agricultural emergencies such as outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, which impact farmers nationwide when livestock movements are restricted.

[edit] Cameo appearances

Many famous people have made cameo appearances on the programme.

• Princess Margaret and the Duke of Westminster appeared in 1984 in connection with a fashion show to commemorate the centenary of the NSPCC.^[13]
• Dame Judi Dench made an appearance as Pru Forrest in 1989 for the 10,000th episode. Terry Wogan was featured and Esther Rantzen was responsible for the sound effects.^[24]
• Radio presenter John Peel appeared as himself in 1991.^[36]
• Celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh judged Ambridge's entries in the National Gardens Scheme open gardens competition in May 2003.^[37]
• Radio presenter Chris Moyles appeared in June 2004 as a random customer — and suspected National Pub of the Year judge — in The Bull.^[38][39]
• Comedian and presenter Griff Rhys Jones appeared as himself in July 2004, when he was drafted into Lynda's campaign to restore the Cat and Fiddle pub.^[40]
• Stephen Fry, although not appearing in an official episode, took part in Victoria Wood Goes to Ambridge, a series of five mini-episodes written by Victoria Wood for Comic Relief in March 2005. Also making fleeting appearances were Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen and Liza Tarbuck.^[41]
• Zandra Rhodes played herself in an episode in September 2006 in connection with a charity fashion show.^[42][43]
• Robert Winston appeared as a fertility specialist consulted by Hayley and Roy Tucker in January^[44] and February 2007.^[45]
• Mike Gatting appeared as himself in September 2007 at the centre of a misunderstanding between Sid and Jolene Perks during the npower Village Cup final at Lord's Cricket Ground.^[46][47]
• Others who have made appearances include Britt Ekland, Humphrey Lyttelton (1956), Anneka Rice and Dame Edna Everage.

[edit] Theme tune

The theme tune of The Archers' is called "Barwick Green" and is a maypole dance from the suite My Native Heath, written in 1924 by the Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood. An alternative arrangement, played by The Yetties, is used to introduce the Sunday omnibus. In the 1990s, having used the same recording for many years, the theme was re-recorded in stereo. The original orchestral arrangement was used, but the slightly different mixing led to many listeners considering the new version to be inferior.^{[citation needed]}

Robert Robinson once compared the tune to "the genteel abandon of a lifelong teetotaller who has suddenly taken to drink".^{[citation needed]} On April Fool's Day 2004 both The Independent and The Today Programme claimed that BBC executives had commissioned composer Brian Eno to record an electronic version of "Barwick Green" as a replacement for the current theme,^[48][49] while comedian Billy Connolly once joked that the theme was so typically English that it should be the national anthem.

[edit] Fan clubs

Two organisations dedicated to the programme were established in the 1990s. Archers Addicts is the official body, run by members of the cast. Archers Anarchists was formed around the same time, objecting to the "castist" assumptions propagated by the BBC, and claiming that the characters are real.

[edit] Overseas parallels

In 1994, the BBC World Service in Afghanistan began broadcasting Naway Kor, Naway Jwand ("New Home, New Life"), an everyday story of country folk with built-in bits of useful information. Although the useful information was more likely to concern unexploded land mines and opium addiction than the latest modern farming techniques, the inspiration and model of Naway Kor, Naway Jwand was The Archers, and the initial workshopping with Afghan writers included an Archers scriptwriter.^[50] A 1997 study found that listeners to the soap opera were significantly less likely to be injured by a mine than non-listeners.^[51]

In Rwanda, the BBC World Service's Kinyarwanda-Kirundi service has been broadcasting the Archers-inspired soap opera Urunana ("Hand in Hand") since 1999.^[52][53]

The Archers was also the model for the Russian radio soap opera Dom 7, Podyezd 4 ("House 7, Entrance 4")^[54] — on which the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, once made a cameo appearance.^[55]

The Japanese national radio and TV network, NHK, offers a "morning drama" (asadora) that runs for 15 minutes Monday through Saturday on television. It started on radio in the early postwar and then was moved to television in 1961. Each series lasts six months, so about 150 episodes. All center on a heroine, usually a young girl facing challenges (usually in Japanese traditional social ways) to realize her dream. Various programs have often been used to get across a socially useful message, such as recently the foster-child system, as well as celebrating the locales around Japan where it is centered.