Emmerdale Farm
| Emmerdale | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Also known as | Emmerdale Farm (1972–1989) |
| Genre | Soap opera |
| Created by | Kevin Laffan |
| Starring |
Present cast Former cast |
| Theme music composer | Tony Hatch |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 7,818 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Various (currently John Whiston) |
| Producer(s) |
Various (currently Iain MacLeod) |
| Running time | 22 mins (excluding advertisements) |
| Production company(s) |
ITV Studios (Yorkshire Television) |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Picture format | 576i (1972) 4:3 (1972–2001) 16:9 (2002–2011) 1080i HD (2011–present) |
| Original release | 16 October 1972 – present (44 years, 202 days) |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Emmerdale (known as Emmerdale Farm until 1989) is a long-running British soap opera set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, Emmerdale Farm was first broadcast on 16 October 1972. Produced by ITV Yorkshire, it has been filmed at their Leeds studio since its inception. The programme has been broadcast in every ITV region.
The series originally appeared during the afternoon until 1978, when it was moved to an early-evening time slot in most regions; London and Anglia followed during the mid-1980s. Until December 1988, Emmerdale took seasonal breaks; since then, it has been broadcast year-round.
Episodes air on ITV weekday evenings at 19:00, with a second Thursday episode at 20:00. The programme began broadcasting in high definition on 10 October 2011. Emmerdale is the United Kingdom's second-longest-running television soap opera (after ITV's Coronation Street), and attracts an average of five to seven million viewers per episode.
October 2012 marked the 40th anniversary of the show. During that month, the show made a live episode to mark the anniversary.
The premise of Emmerdale Farm was similar to the BBC radio soap opera The Archers, focusing on a family, a farm and characters in a nearby village. The programme's farmyard filming was originally modelled on RTÉ's The Riordans, an Irish soap opera which was broadcast from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. The Riordans broke new ground for soap operas by being filmed largely outdoors (on a farm, owned on the programme by Tom and Mary Riordan) rather than in a studio—the usual practice of British and American soap operas. The programme pioneered farmyard location shooting, with farm animals and equipment. During the 1960s and 1970s, outdoor filming of television programmes with outdoor broadcast units (OBUs) was in its infancy due to higher costs and reliance on the weather. The Riordans' success demonstrated that a soap opera could be filmed largely outdoors, and Yorkshire Television sent people to its set in County Meath to see the programme's production firsthand.
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