Editing The Archers (section)

===Death of Grace Archer===
One of the most controversial ''Archers'' episodes was broadcast on 22 September 1955, coinciding with the launch of the UK's first commercial television station. Phil and Grace Archer had been married just a few months earlier, and their blossoming relationship was the talk of the nation. However, searching for a story which would demonstrate real tragedy among increasingly unconvincing episode cliff-hangers, Godfrey Baseley decided that Grace would have to die. The scripts for the week commencing 19 September 1955 were written, recorded, and broadcast on each day, with an "exercise in topicality" given as the explanation to the cast. On Thursday, listeners heard the [[sound effect]]s of Grace trying to rescue Midnight, her horse, from a fire in the stable at Brookfield and the crash of a falling [[Beam (structure)|timber beam]].<ref name="ep10000">{{cite episode|title= 26 May 1989|number= 10,000|series= The Archers |network= BBC Radio 4}}</ref>

Whether the timing of the episode was a deliberate attempt to overshadow the opening night of the BBC's first commercial rival has been debated ever since. It was certainly planned some months in advance, but it may well be that the actual date of the death was changed during the scriptwriting stage to coincide with [[History of ITV|the launch of Associated-Rediffusion]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Smethurst |title = The Archers| year = 1996 | page = 63 |chapter = Dead Girls Tell No Tales |quote = Even this presupposes that the BBC realized the impact that the 'death' would have&nbsp;— and all the evidence is that the BBC was totally taken by surprise.}}</ref> Deliberate or not, the episode attracted widespread media attention, reported by newspapers around the world.

This controversy has been parodied twice: in "[[The Bowmans]]", an episode of the television comedy programme ''Hancock'', and in the play ''[[The Killing of Sister George]]'' and [[The Killing of Sister George (film)|its 1968 film adaptation]]. On the 50th anniversary of ITV's launch, [[Ysanne Churchman]], who played Grace, sent them a congratulatory card signed "Grace Archer".

In 1996, William Smethurst recounted a conversation with Baseley in which he reveals his real motivation for killing off Grace Archer: Churchman had been encouraging the other actors to join a trade union.<ref>{{cite book |author=Smethurst |title = The Archers |year = 1996 |page = 64 |chapter = Dead Girls Tell No Tales |quote='She was trying to get the actors to join a trade union,' he told the author of this book, in 1995, 'so I killed her off. Very few of the original actors were professionals. I'd taken them on because they were countrymen with natural country voices. But she was stirring them up and trying to get them to join the actors' union, and saying we should only employ union actors, which would have been fatal.'}}</ref>