The Archers favourites star in 75th anniversary photoshoot and talk THAT dramatic George whodunnit reveal
Radio Times heads to Ambridge to take a deep dive into the latest plot twist.
This article originally appeared in Radio Times magazine.
It began in 2024 when Alice Carter, an intermittently recovering alcoholic from the prosperous Aldridge family, fell asleep drunk in the passenger seat of her car.
Her nephew-in-law George Grundy, a farmworker’s son, couldn’t resist offering to drive her home (it was a flash car). But Alice half-woke and clawed drunkenly for the door: it made George swerve and knock another car, bearing Mick, Joy and Fallon, from the bridge into the River Am.
George dived in for a heroic rescue but afterwards panicked and moved the blotto Alice into the driver’s seat. Fallon lost the baby she didn’t know she was expecting, and everyone’s trauma rolled on for weeks. Alice was riven by guilt, though she couldn’t remember driving.
George finally admitted the truth: when his grandparents Neil and Susan reported it, he got sent to prison for eight months.
On release, he found most of Ambridge pretty unforgiving. Jobless and barred from the Bull, he ranted at all of them on New Year’s Eve. Following a conversation with the now saintly, forgiving Alice however, he resolved to put the past behind him and make good.
Hollie Chapman, who plays Alice, explains, “The tables turned, and when she went from being the drunk to someone giving George wise advice, the scene felt really emotional, and I nearly lost it.”
Angus Stobie who voices George and joined Chapman on RT’s photoshoot to mark the dramatic storyline for the soap’s 75th anniversary, agrees that something changed in the characters’ dynamic.
“I think George is slightly in awe of Alice and how she handled the whole situation. He also then means to change, family is at the centre of it all, and he wants to work and give back and provide.”
But as George walked to his parents’ house in the dark that night, someone followed him, whacked him on the head with a wine bottle and left him for dead.
Thankfully George recovered, and for weeks listeners heard characters suspecting one another of the attempted murder: Jolene the landlady; Fallon the pub cook and her policeman lover; George’s sister Keira; Alice’s dad Brian; Joy and her boyfriend Mick; and Amber’s roughneck father.
Now we learn it was actually – shock! – Alice’s illegitimate half-brother Ruairi, who aspires to take over the family farm.
Will Brian, in his 80s with angina, continue to pretend it was him to save his son? Will Ruairi confess? Will George lose his rag again?
We asked Chapman, Stobie and some of the other actors who play these key figures how they feel about the dramatic revelation and what it means for the future of their characters in Ambridge.
"There are a lot of ways this could play out. Not necessarily criminal justice, but village justice – the people themselves might deal with it!" Chapman reveals.
She wasn't the first to learn of the latest Ambridge twist - that honour was bestowed on Brian star Charles Collingwood.
"I was let in on the secret about Ruairi before everybody else, and sworn to secrecy," he explains.
"Everyone was saying it would be me who did it. But really! Brian could barely lift a bottle – except up to his lips! I loved the great scene with George, when Brian decides to cover for Ruairi. And then the one with Ruairi!
"Alice is Brian’s favourite child, he adores her. But remember, he has daughters and a stepdaughter and always longed for a son. Ruairi is the apple of his eye."
He continues: "Back in the 1980s, they nearly wrote out the Aldridges for being a happy, wealthy family with no problems. But then they gave Brian a romantic wandering eye and the affair with Siobhan, from which Ruairi was born. Crises are an actor’s dream: the hard scenes to play are the ones where you’re walking across a field of not-quite-ripe oilseed rape."
Arthur Hughes, who has voiced Ruairi since 2018, says that keeping the plot's outcome a secret what somewhat akin to the Beeb's reality TV show hit The Traitors.
"It was very exciting, the clandestine nature of the whodunnit. I was taken aside in November and told it was my character, when The Celebrity Traitors was at its height.
"I had to be careful in the studio not to give it away. Luckily, there was an ordinary plot to focus on, about wanting the farm…"
Sunny Ormonde, better known to listeners as Ruairi's step-aunt Lillian Bellamy, adds: "Would she agree to protect Ruairi? Interesting one. She might, you know! Blood is thicker than water, though he’s just her step-nephew-in-law."
Read more:
- The Archers confirmed for live 75th anniversary tour as fans can celebrate beloved radio drama
- Bridge Farm to be brought to life at new RHS show to celebrate The Archers' 75th anniversary
Read our interviews with George, Ruairi, Alice, Brian and Lilian – or the actors who play them – in tomorrow's edition of Radio Times – subscribe here.
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