East Enders comes to Ambridge- Archers April Round-up.

HIGH DRAMA in this month's BBC radio soap and no one is quite sure if it is all because editor Vanessa Whitburn has gone off on her sabbatical.

But for whatever reason we have seen some fast moving crime drama in the village where usually it is only ever Eddie Grundy getting caught for some idiotic scam. Other felonies are committed, such as David Archer illegally shooting a badger and Helen Archer getting involved in a hit and run whilst drunk, but as they are Archers they rarely, if ever, get caught.

But now that acting editor, John Yorke, has moved in his experience as BBC Vision's controller of drama production, which includes EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty, may be upping the pace in sleepy old Ambridge.

So instead of a lot of left of centre women ruling the roost and bossing their sluggish husbands we have had Alice and Christopher Carter getting down and dirty wearing nothing but blacksmith's aprons; Amy Franks, the saintly daughter of saintly St Stephen's vicar Alan, having a fling with a married West Indian and to round off the month Adam Travers-Macy being knocked unconscious by a gang who we suspect has already stolen Tom Archer's quad-bike. Such excitement usually takes a decade to unravel but April in Ambridge has set off at a cracking pace worthy of any TV soap.

There have, of course, been the usual things to endure such as the Bridge Farm gang of four being as insufferably smug as only they can be, and Usha Franks, a supposedly tough Ugandan Asian solicitor going into meltdown over step daughter Amy's misdemeanours and incredibly sharing her worries with bezzie mate and know-all, prurient, mouth of the Am, Ruth Archer.

But on the plus side Tom Archer's ready meals look to have hit the editorial spike while the mega-dairy has been granted consent thus thwarting the hectoring female farmers, Ruth and Pat Archer. Anything that shuts these two up is to be welcomed with open arms.

And with TV soap themes now apparently finding favour can it be long before the surrogate father of the wonder child Henry turns up at Bridge Farm and demands visiting rights from the child's equally insufferable mother, Helen? One can but hope not.