The Archers - Characters

Characters

• Many of the storylines concern the title family, the middle-class Archers, who own and manage Brookfield Farm. The farm has been passed down the generations from the original owner Dan (now deceased) to his son Phil (until his death on 13 February 2010 the oldest surviving cast member), and is now co-owned by three of Phil's four children: David (who manages it with his wife Ruth), Elizabeth and Kenton.
• the prosperous Aldridges, portrayed as money-driven practitioners of agribusiness. Brian, the head of the family, is a serial adulterer,
• the rich and elderly Woolleys, with Jack now badly affected by Alzheimer's disease,
• the Grundys, formerly struggling tenant farmers who were brought to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s as comic characters, but are now seen as doggedly battling adversity,
• the urban, nouveau riche "incomers": pretentious and domineering, Lynda Snell is the butt of many jokes, although her sheer energy makes her a stalwart of village life. She is partnered by the long-suffering Robert,
• the perpetually struggling Carters,
• the newly-remarried milkman and casual farm labourer Mike Tucker, his kind-hearted and stunningly attractive much younger wife Vicky who divides opinion like a knife, his on-site son, Roy, daughter-in-law Hayley and two granddaughters, and his daughter Brenda, an Archer-in-waiting as Tom's intended,
• village squires, the upper class Pargetters, owners of Lower Loxley Hall in Ambridge's outskirts. Nigel, the deceased former head of the family, was keen on environmentalism but was sometimes seen as nice but dim.

Many plots involve the teen and twenties offspring of these families, so new nuclear families come into existence over time. Other distant relatives also reappear. Some characters are well known but never heard on air. Over the years, some silent characters become real, or vice-versa (for example, Mrs Antrobus, "the Dog Woman").