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Charlotte Higgins on The Archers: Jackie Weaver is the new queen of Ambridge

Making a celebrity appearance at the village fete, the viral star of the Handforth parish council meeting proves she really has the authority as she out-Archers the Archers

The scene: a spare bedroom in Amy Franks’ flat, Nottingham. At first we do not recognise who lies immobile beneath the duvet. The air is thick with the stench of stale alcohol. Detritus lies around the bed, Tracey Emin-style: empty bottles of corner-shop vodka, take-out cartons crusted with half-consumed food, jeans and underwear tangled in a grubby heap. Then, with a sigh, the figure turns and we see that it is Ambridge alcoholic Alice Carter – asleep or, more properly, passed out.

Cut to a montage of images as they pass through her mind in dizzying progression: in one crazed vignette, Shula Hebden Lloyd screams as she’s tossed from her pony. A moment later, the heavy figure of Neil Carter lumbers towards her prone body and cradles her mournfully. Next, Shula is back home from hospital, her arm in a sling; Neil has arrived, bearing a dish of lasagne, but testily she sends him away. A third hallucination: Shula receives another visitor, this time her recent ex-husband, Alistair Lloyd, in whom she confides she is in love with her erstwhile rescuer, Ambridge’s premier pigman, Neil Carter himself.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3t2tS1G
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