Charlotte Higgins on The Archers: A Car Crash of a Confession | The Archers

GGeorge finally cracked! He confessed everything—that he had been driving Alice Carter’s car when it crashed, endangering the lives of several people, that he had put his sleepy, drunk passenger in the driver’s seat to incriminate her. But he only confessed to his parents, Emma and Will—whose atavistic adherence to the “Grundy code” makes it impossible to betray their own son. Instead, they have tried to convince George to do the right thing of his own free will. This has resulted in the frequent whining, “I can’t go to jail!”

The boy, alas, has as much moral backbone as an invertebrate. He eventually enlisted the help of – sensational! – his notorious great-uncle, Clive Horrobin. As loyal listeners will know, Clive is the most outrageous offshoot of that (now largely reformed) clan. He once held up the village shop in an armed robbery, and as a result of harbouring him, his sister, Susan Carter, was jailed for six months in 1993. Furious Archers listeners wrote to Michael Howard, then Home Secretary, asking for clemency for the woman who became known as The Ambridge One. George may be finding that he has bitten off more than he can chew with Clive, who is sounding increasingly like a Brummie Rob Titchener.

All of this was satisfyingly awful for George’s mother, Emma, ​​a person about whom I have very mixed feelings. The height of schadenfreude was hearing her pretend to enjoy her surprise 40th birthday party when she could barely process the full horror of The Truth. The cake was shaped like a chainsaw—a nod to her new career as a tree surgeon, but a suitably violent image nonetheless. Fallon and Ed had briefly flirted with the idea of ​​theming the evening around Kubrick’s The Shining . That would have been great: the increasingly deranged George is certainly verging on a passable Jack Nicholson; Seren and Nova Archer could have made an appearance as the sinister Grady twins.

Vet Alastair’s romantic life – which has seen him fall in love with married veterinary assistant Denise, whose son Paul also works at the practice – seems to be clearing itself up now that it’s all out in the open and Paul’s frankly understandable hostilities have ceased. Things were looking bleak when, following a complaint from a client, Alastair was summoned to head office to see Don “the don” James – cap of the cap of evil veterinary empire Lovell James, who is pictured shrouded in cigar smoke in the middle of his wood-paneled lair. (“No one ever saw him laugh,” according to Alistair.) Fortunately, this Vito Corleone of the animal care world has shown an unusually human side, and the path of true love now runs a little smoother.