William Smethurst obituary

Radio and TV producer who revitalised The Archers during his tenure as editor

Despite being a soft-spoken Lancastrian of mild-mannered appearance, the writer and producer William Smethurst, who has died aged 71, was known to his detractors in radio and television as “Butcher Bill”. But the ruthless skills combined with mischievous flair that he displayed as editor of The Archers for eight years from 1978 were widely credited with saving Radio 4’s flagging rural soap opera and making it the cult show it later became. Smethurst was the man who licensed writers to scandalise sleepy Ambridge and once persuaded Princess Margaret to make a guest appearance.

He was less successful when Central TV lured him from BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham to pull off the same trick with Crossroads, its Midlands motel saga, which had run out of steam. Smethurst ditched Tony Hatch’s theme tune, killed off characters (much as he had Dan and Doris Archer), and made the plots (and scenery) more credible and the cast much more glamorous, with the help of the motel swimming pool he installed. Some critics preferred its previous awfulness and the show folded in 1988.

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