Has The Archers cheated listeners with George Grundy reveal?

So we now know who lamped poor George Grundy (played by Angus Stobie) with a bottle of well-oaked Chardonnay on New Year’s Eve as he walked to make amends with his mother, Emma (Emerald O'Hanrahan). But I doubt whether any Ambridge addict who placed a bet on whodunnit is now sitting pretty after their hunch paid off.

None of the main suspects who were in the frame turned out to be guilty – from one of Marky’s henchmen getting even for George grassing him up in prison to the improbable notion it was George’s younger half-sister Keira, fed up with the disruption he caused in the family.

Add in the long list of others with potential motives, including Brad (Taylor Uttley), Jazzer (Ryan Kelly), Fallon (Joanna Van Kampen), Harrison (James Cartwright), Mick (Martin Barrass), Chris (Wilf Scolding), Lilian (Sunny Ormonde), Brian (Charles Collingwood) and Amber’s dad, and the scripts were a masterclass in misdirection.

Yet when it was revealed in last Friday’s episode that it was Brian’s beloved son Ruairi (Arthur Hughes) who had done the dastardly deed, listeners couldn’t help but be surprised.

Not that there’s no logic behind Ruairi being the attacker. He is the half-brother of Alice (Hollie Chapman) after all, and she almost went to prison after George placed her – blind drunk – at the wheel of her car, following the crash back in 2024 that saw Mick, Joy (Jackie Lye) and Fallon career off the road and into the icy waters of the Am.

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Fallon lost her unborn child after the crash and the guilt almost overwhelmed the hoodwinked Alice, who couldn’t remember what happened that fateful night, and saw her turning back to her old, destructive friend, the bottle.

So it’s feasible that Ruairi has harboured a long-simmering grudge against George and that on a drunken New Year’s Eve in the Bull at which he saw George square up to his elderly father Brian, whose angina seems to strike whenever he gets het up or over-exerts himself, he would grab one of the bottles of fancy wine that he hadn’t already polished off and in a mist of alcoholic rage, followed George out of the pub, saw him talking to the saintly Alice, and further incensed stalked behind him on the bridal path and whacked him.

It’s admittedly a neat bit of plotting that the rash actions of a volatile, impetuous young man prove to be the rough justice handed out to another volatile, impetuous young man whose rash actions in panicking and putting Alice in the frame for the crash – when he could have easily explained what happened and used his heroism in saving Mick, Joy and Fallon as mitigating evidence – started all the trouble and upheaval in the village in the first place.

[caption id="attachment_2036520" align="alignnone" width="2298"][image id="2036520" size="full" title="Archers" alt="Promotional images of Hollie Chapman as Alice Carter and Angus Stobie as George Grundy in The Archers put side by side" classes=""] Hollie Chapman as Alice Carter and Angus Stobie as George Grundy in The Archers.[/caption]

However, the problem I have is that the writers appear to have ignored one of the golden rules of crime writing, namely that the reader (or listener in this case) should always be able to work out whodunnit, or as American critic, editor and bestselling author SS Van Dine put it in his 1928 “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” – the reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

Since the New Year’s Eve episode I don’t think listeners have had many clues plainly stated that could lay the blame at Ruairi’s door. Yes, we heard him reacting angrily when a contrite George visited the Aldridges in an attempt to apologise for what he did to Alice and move on with his life.

Only the most perceptive listeners would think he lost his cool because the prospect of George being accepted as a decent albeit troubled human being by his family, would mean that his violence against him was even more heinous. It just seemed like volatile, entitled Ruairi acting out again.

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And one would have to have an eidetic memory to have noticed that Ruairi, Kate and Adam sunk their freebie bottle of swanky vino early in the evening on NYE, thus making Ruairi drunk and giving him a ready-made weapon in the form of an empty bottle with a fancy label.

Writer and director Dave Payne, who came up with the idea for the whole storyline, told The Archers Podcast that when he first took it to the editor he was told to come up with a list of suspects and, walking away, instantly had a list of 20 possibles. It feels as if we were presented with the 19 others as potential suspects, but the real one was hidden from view. Hiding behind his father again, right up to the last.

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However, having said all that, placing Ruairi in the frame has served up the prospect of a juicy story in which Brian tries to protect the son-who-can do-no-wrong, to the extent of facing prison time, while George could use his recording of Brian confessing to the crime to leverage an easier ride for himself in a village that has been unforgiving in its approach to rehabilitation for ex-cons who have done their time. Or will Ruairi come clean and be sent to jail, and come out a hardened criminal with even more of a grudge against George?

More for Ambridge fans to obsess over and we have to be at least thankful that it wasn’t a Murder on the Orient-Express scenario, with the whole village having had a hand in meting out rough justice to George.

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.