The Archers, review: evil Rob's abuse story is flawed, but has impact far beyond the airwaves

Ambridge has had its share of villains over The Archers’ 71 year-run, but none quite as coldly unfeeling as Rob Titchener. In Sunday’s episode, the curtain fell, and in a final indignity for Borsetshire’s pre-eminent narcissist, nobody was there to see him die.

The news came via text message from Rob’s toad-like brother, Miles. After an episode spent dodging his calls, Rob’s ex-wife, Helen Archer, finally caught up and had a moment of release 11 years in the making. Death by a fast-growing brain tumour put an end to years of psychological torture, for the audience as much as Helen and her family. 

As Friday’s electric two-hander between Rob and Helen (Timothy Watson and Louiza Patikas) showed, even impending death couldn’t make Rob think about anyone other than himself. Certainly, he would have been livid to learn that much of this episode focused more on Grey Gables manager Adil making things up with his team after his moonlight flit a few weeks back.

Helen is one of the radio drama’s least sympathetic characters, but no one deserved Rob’s casual cruelty. His most heinous crime – rape; how their son, Jack, was conceived – has not been mentioned overtly but awareness of this horror bubbles away in any scene that featured Jack’s curiosity about his birth father, and which led Helen to take Rob a handmade card from the boy – a son in DNA only. As Helen told her equally annoying brother, Tom, of her worries that Rob would always hold power over her, you had to wonder whether that would be the case – and whether proper therapy or trauma counselling would ever make its way to Ambridge’s GP surgery.  

A flicker of sympathy had appeared in recent weeks as listeners learned more about Rob’s own abusive childhood, but that was quickly extinguished by his inability to treat people as humans rather than things. The Titcheners’ story hasn’t always been clearly or consistently written, but it has had an impact far beyond the airwaves. Starting as an affair in 2012, Helen and Rob’s relationship developed quickly, moving towards one of coercive control in time with its becoming a criminal offence in 2015.

When audiences were frustrated at not being able to “help” Helen or her young son, Henry, whom Rob had taken on as a surrogate father, listener Paul Trueman set up a fundraiser in Helen’s name. More than £175,00 was donated to the domestic abuse charity, Refuge, with many messages left by people who had experienced the grim reality of domestic violence either themselves or through loved ones and were donating on their behalf.

Eight years ago, Helen stabbed Rob in self-defence to protect herself and her children. This weekend, she got to walk away on her own terms – her family free at last. Swingeing cuts have hit The Archers team as they have throughout the BBC, and it is worth celebrating how this now decimated department has managed to deliver a storyline with such relevance and cut through.

A small moment of pity, though, for Rob Titchener: a man whose brother writes “all the best” at the end of a message announcing his death. We shall see his like again – it’s a radio drama, after all – but for the sake of listeners’ nerves, let’s have a few months of peace first.