The Archers looks to the future with high-tech drones and driverless tractors

When searching for cutting-edge technology on the airwaves, viewers might naturally turn to forensic crime dramas, science documentaries or natural history filming.

But don't be fooled by the glamour of high-tech television.

For there is one show so in touch with the 21st century that it is already recording future technologies in case they become authorised for use: The Archers.

The Radio 4 drama has this week recorded a large high-tech drone, ready for characters in Ambridge to monitor their crops for plot lines later this year.

And in their back pockets, sound recordists already have the noise of drones yet to be legalised for crop spraying, in case they come into use for in the next few years, and GPS-controlled tractors that could operate without drivers.

This week saw The Archers sound team visit Harper Adams University, recording a large drone ready for use at Home Farm.

The show last recorded early drones in 2015, but have upgraded as they have become more widely used in the farming world and part of the Archers plots.

Graham Harvey, the show's agricultural editor, said: "Its a technology that's proving quite useful to many farmers and one of our farmer characters has taken to using them as a way of looking at crops from above and getting an idea of the disease situation.

"They're quite widely used on farms now, otherwise they wouldn't be in the Archers: we reflect what happens in the real world.

"In the last couple of years there's been a whole spate of new technologies of which drones are only one."

Elsewhere, he said, writers were keeping an eye on driverless tractors and robotic harvesters, ready to write them into the storyline once they became commonplace in real life.

Liza Wallis, sound editor, said the production team had had this week recorded the sound of "very impressive" large drones, showing them taking off, hovering and moving in all directions for whatever Home Farm required of them.

"We were also able to record one that, if legislation is changed in future, might be used for crop spraying, but that's a way off yet," she said. 

"I'm told that we've got to wait for a change in legislation but we recorded it just in case."

At a glance | The Archers

After attending an agricultural fair in Nottingham, she has also kept the sound of an automatic GPS tractor, just in case the people of Ambridge ever feel the need to buy one.

With 65 years-worth of sound in their archives, Wallis said it was rare that programme-makers needed to record anything new, tending to go out a few times a year to keep up with new models of farming machinery.

One recent storyline did see them record geese at different stages of their life, as the Fairbrothers started a new business.

But when they took on a plot about IBR, a respiratory disease in cattle, they need not have worried about the expense of working out in the field. 

"In the archive, we had cows coughing," she said. It's amazing what you find."

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