Emmerdale

Emmerdale Farm was created when Kevin Laffan was asked to write a lunchtime farming serial for ITV, as the network was looking to expand its daytime programming after government restrictions on broadcasting hours were relaxed. He initially said no as his agent advised him that writing a soap would tarnish his reputation as a playwright, which he found to be part of a snobbish attitude shown towards soap operas. Laffan eventually said yes and formed a 26-episode play that would act as a 13-week serial.[3] Laffan had worked on a farm for six months in his youth, and said on writing about farm life: "I was intrigued by the idea that farming was a way of life, as opposed to simply a way of earning a living."[4] 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 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 first-hand.[5][6]

The first episode aired on 16 October 1972 at 1:30 pm, and began with the Sugden family convening in the fictional village of Beckindale for the funeral of a relative.[4] Peter Willes, the then-head of serial dramas at Yorkshire Television, did not like that the soap began with a funeral as he found it to be a "very downbeat way to start" and "a big switch-off".[3] However, Laffan pushed the concept as he felt that a funeral would be the best option from a dramatic viewpoint. The show's early years as Emmerdale Farm centred on the Sugden family and rural farm life. The show was originally broadcast twice a week in the afternoon[6] and was regarded by critics as a "sleepy soap" where not much happened.[7] After its initial 13-week run, the positive viewer response led to an increase to 26 weeks and then a 6-month run, which led to the eventual year-long screening of the soap. The increase in episode output was accompanied by a move to a late-afternoon time slot.[3] By 1977, it was moved to a prime time evening slot in most ITV regions.[6]

In the late 1980s, a new production team headed by executive producer Keith Richardson was brought in, and the show's focus moved to the nearby village of Beckindale, with more dramatic storylines such as Pat Sugden's 1986 car crash and the 1988 Crossgill fire. By 1988, the show had been moved to an evening time slot in all ITV regions.[4] Emmerdale Farm also began broadcasting episodes year-round that year.[8] Reflecting its change in focus, the title was changed to Emmerdale on 14 November 1989. Coinciding with the title change was the introduction of the wealthy Tate family, bringing with them racier storylines.[6][9] Under Richardson, the soap's popularity gradually began to improve. Richardson produced the programme for 24 years, overseeing its transformation from a minor, daytime, rural drama into a major prime time UK soap opera.[10]

By 1993, Emmerdale was into its third decade on the air and December 1993 saw a major turning point in the show's history, when an episode featured a plane crashing into the village of Beckindale, killing four main characters,[8][6] giving Emmerdale its highest-ever audience of 18 million[8] and marking its transformation into a major prime time soap opera.[6] The plane crash "allowed the writers to get rid of much dead wood, and reinvent the soap virtually from scratch,"[11] which included survivors changing the village name from "Beckindale" to "Emmerdale".[8] The production team had continually had issues with the fictional village's geography, but they found that the plane crash allowed them to introduce a village that had continuity.[3] Since the plane crash, Emmerdale has had increasingly dramatic storylines and glamorous characters.[8] In 1994, former Coronation Street producer Mervyn Watson was hired to inject more humour into the show.[12] New long-term characters, such as the Windsor and Dingle families, were also introduced in the 1990s. The Tates became the soap's leading family during the decade.[4]

By 2000, Emmerdale episodes were regularly getting 12 million viewers, and the number of episodes per week was increased from three to five.[12] An ITV talent show, Soapstars, was held in 2001 to cast the new five-member Calder family; the Calders made their debut on the show in November that year, and all members had left by August 2002.[13][14] In 2004, Emmerdale became the first British soap opera to broadcast six episodes a week.[6] By 2006, Emmerdale was contending with, and at times beating, EastEnders in viewership.[6] In 2007, an hour-long special episode revealing the murderer of Tom King (Kenneth Farrington) aired; the episode gained an average of 8.6 million viewers, peaking at 9.1 million viewers when Tom's son Carl (Tom Lister) confesses to the murder. The episode received more than double the amount of viewership EastEnders did.[15]

The early and mid-2000s saw the introduction of major long-term characters, including the King family and Cain (Jeff Hordley) and Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins).[16] This era also saw high-profile castings such as Patsy Kensit as Sadie King in 2004,[17] and Amanda Donohoe and Maxwell Caulfield as Natasha and Mark Wylde in 2008.[18] Major storylines during this period included a bus crash, Sarah Sugden's death in a barn fire, a New Year's Eve storm, the Kings River explosion, and the Sugden house fire. In 2009, the longest-tenured character, Jack Sugden (Clive Hornby), was killed off. Jack's funeral featured the first on-screen appearance in 13 years of Annie Sugden (Sheila Mercier). The same year, long-serving executive producer Keith Richardson was replaced by former series producer Steve November (later replaced by John Whiston). Gavin Blyth became the series producer, followed by Stuart Blackburn after Blyth's death.[19]

Emmerdale celebrated its 40th anniversary with its first-ever live episode on 17 October 2012.[20] "Emmerdale Live" featured the death of Carl King (Tom Lister) and a live music festival with performances by Scouting for Girls and the Proclaimers as part of the anniversary celebrations.[21] The story of Carl's death took the show into 2013, when Kate Oates replaced Blackburn as the new series producer. One of Oates' aims was to feature more of the village and rural countryside locations and to bring more "balance" to the show instead of focusing on "a few very high-profile stories".[22] Major storylines during this period included a helicopter crash that killed Ruby Haswell (Alicya Eyo) and Val Pollard (Charlie Hardwick), and a multi-car pile-up.[23] In 2016, Emmerdale was named Best British Soap for the first time at the British Soap Awards.[24] In January 2019, ITV3 began airing episodes of Emmerdale from the beginning of the soap's inception. Billed Classic Emmerdale, ten sequential episodes have been broadcast weekly since.[25]

In March 2019, an episode featuring an exclusively female cast and crew was aired in support of International Women's Day.[26] Executive producer Jane Hudson said that the episode was "a great opportunity for Emmerdale to show the female talent we have both in front and behind the camera."[27] In 2020, the production and filming of Emmerdale was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[28] In order to prevent the programme from coming off air, the episodes shown per week were halved from six to three.[28] They were later reduced to two episodes a week, but have since returned to the normal schedule.[29] In September 2020, it was announced that there would be a "big autumn shake-up"; one of the changes included the casting of Paige Sandhu as Meena Jutla.[30] She was later confirmed to be a serial killer and has been responsible for the murders of Leanna Cavanagh (Mimi Slinger), Andrea Tate (Anna Nightingale) and Ben Tucker (Simon Lennon). All of the actors involved expressed a decision to leave the soap and their exits were incorporated into Meena's serial killer arc, a storyline which has seen Sandhu awarded Best Villain at the 2021 Inside Soap Awards.[31]

On 12 October 2021, it was announced that Emmerdale would partake in a special crossover event involving multiple British soaps to promote the topic of climate change ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The event was first suggested by Emmerdale's executive producer Jane Hudson. It was confirmed that a social media clip featuring two characters from Emmerdale would be discussed in Coronation Street, while Emmerdale itself would refer to events in Casualty.[32][33] In January 2022, it was confirmed that the production team were in the early stages of creating the 50th anniversary storylines set to air in October 2022. They hinted that the anniversary would see a "huge shake-up".[34]

Emmerdale has featured a number of families:

The Sugdens and their relatives, the Merricks and the Skilbecks, were at the centre of the show during the series' first two decades in the 1970s and 1980s (the Emmerdale Farm era). The Sugdens, owners of Emmerdale Farm, were its first family. Many of its members, and those of the Merrick and Skilbeck families, have left or been killed off since the mid-1990s. Sugdens remaining in the village are Jack's daughter, Victoria Sugden (Isabel Hodgins), her son Harry, and Andy Sugden's (Kelvin Fletcher) daughter Sarah (Katie Hill).[42]

December 1984 saw the arrival of Caroline Bates; her teenage children, Kathy and Nick, followed in late 1985. Caroline left the show in 1989, returning for guest appearances in 1991, 1993–1994 and 1996. Nick was written out of the show when he was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1997. Kathy and her niece, Alice, remained in the village until late 2001; by then, Kathy had outlived two husbands. The wealthy Tates were introduced as the new owners of Home Farm in 1989, with the family consisting of Frank Tate (Norman Bowler), wife Kim (Claire King) and children Chris (Peter Amory) and Zoe (Leah Bracknell).[43]

Other families followed: the middle-class Windsors in 1993, known as the Hope family after Viv's (Deena Payne) 2001 marriage to Bob Hope (Tony Audenshaw), and the ne'er-do-well Dingle family in 1994.[44] The Tate, Windsor-Hope and Dingle families predominated during the 1990s and 2000s. The era's storylines included the 1993 plane crash, the 1994 Home Farm siege, the 1998 post-office robbery, the 2000 bus crash, the 2003–04 storm and the 2006 King show-home collapse. By the mid- to late-2000s, the last of the Tates (Zoe, daughter Jean and nephew Joseph) had emigrated to New Zealand. In 2009, Chris Tate's ex-wife Charity and their son Noah returned to the village. In 2017, Joe Tate returned to the village. In 2018, Kim Tate returned to the village after nearly 20-year absence, and in the following year her son James returned as well. Members of the Windsor-Hope family left the village in early 2006, and Viv Hope was killed off in a village fire in February 2011 after nearly 18 years on the show. As of 2022, only Donna Windsor's daughter, April, and the Hope branch of the family (Bob and his children, twins Cathy and Heathcliff) remain.[45]

The King family arrived in 2004, as the Tates departed. All but Jimmy King, his half-sister, Scarlett Nicholls, and his three children, Elliott, Angelica and Carl, were killed off. By 2018, most of the Dingles still remained, having actually increased their numbers in Emmerdale over the years. Their circumstances had changed in their two decades in the village; Chas Dingle owned half of The Woolpack, with Charity Dingle owning the other half, and Marlon was a chef there. In 2014, the Dingles, Bartons and Whites were the central families; the Bartons are a farming family, and the Whites owned Home Farm. In 2022, Daniel Kilkelly of Digital Spy stated that the Dingles were "arguably the best-known family from the current cast."[45]

Emmerdale reaches viewers in the Republic of Ireland via Virgin Media One, which broadcasts the series simultaneously with ITV in the UK. Emmerdale was formerly broadcast during the day on RTÉ One from 1972 to 2001, before it moved to TV3, now known as Virgin Media One. RTÉ were several months behind; for many years, they broadcast the show five days a week (instead of ITV's three days a week) and took a break during the summer. As the series began a five-night week, RTÉ fell behind the ITV broadcasts; the gap between RTÉ One's last episode and TV3's first episode was approximately three months.[55] In 2015, UTV (the Northern Irish ITV Region holder) decided to buy the rights to ITV programming for the Republic of Ireland. It was broadcast on UTV Ireland (now Virgin Media Three) in 2015 and 2016, it was then moved back to TV3 (now known as Virgin Media one) when Virgin Media Ireland, the owners of the TV3 Group (now known as Virgin Media Television Ireland) bought UTV Ireland from ITV, following the sale of UTV to ITV a few months previously.[56][57]

The series has appeared in Sweden as Hem till gården ("Home to the Farm") since the 1970s – originally on TV2, and since 1994, on TV4. Emmerdale is the most-watched daytime non-news programme in Sweden, attracting from 150,000 to 200,000 viewers daily.[58] The programme appears in Finland on MTV3 where it attracts an average of 200,000 to 250,000 viewers per episode, making it the most watched non-Finnish every-weekday program in Finnish television. Ratings have, however, declined in the past few years, previously being consecutively around 350,000 to 400,000 per episode.[59] Emmerdale is broadcast in New Zealand on TVNZ 1, where it is the second-most-watched daytime programme, after the news.[60] Emmerdale was broadcast in Australia for the first time in July 2006, when UKTV began airing the series with episode 4288.[61][62] Emmerdale has been available to viewers in the United States of America via the BritBox streaming service since March 2017. New episodes typically appear on the service within five hours of their original broadcast in the UK.[63]

Esholt, West Yorkshire, used for exterior scenes from 1976 to 1997

Village set, built by Yorkshire Television in 1997 on the Harewood estate near Eccup, Leeds, West Yorkshire

The original Emmerdale Farm buildings are located near to the village of Leathley. The buildings are one of the few original filming locations used for the entire series and have been involved in numerous storylines.[64] Scenes initially filmed in the farmhouse were filmed at Lindley Farm, owned by Arthur Peel, a farmer. Laffan and the researchers found his farm ideal for scenes and the location was large enough for cast and crew members to park their vehicles there. Yorkshire Television promised Peel to keep his identity and the location of his farm a secret, but viewers eventually discovered both and would visit in the hopes of meeting the cast there.[3] Location shooting was originally filmed in the village of Arncliffe in Littondale, a quiet valley in the Yorkshire Dales. The Falcon, the village hotel, served as the fictional Woolpack Inn. After four years of filming there, it was moved to the village of Esholt in 1976. The Woolpack's real-life location was changed to Commercial Inn in Esholt, and eventually, the real owner of the inn agreed to change the name to the Woolpack.[3]

After the soap began transmitting episodes 52 weeks of the year, the production needed more space. This led to the purchase of a four-floor mill in Farsley for £2 million, which a building team converted into the Emmerdale Production Centre.[3] Construction of another purpose-built set began on the Harewood estate in 1996 and it has been used since 1997, after being opened by Prime Minister John Major.[3] The Harewood set is a replica of Esholt, with minor alterations. Filming returned to Esholt for a one-off episode in 2016 for a special episode centred around Ashley Thomas' (John Middleton) dementia which aired in December 2016. The location was used to represent Ashley's onset of dementia to the viewer.[65] Location filming is also done in the City of Leeds and other West Yorkshire locations; scenes set in the fictional market town of Hotten are currently filmed in Otley, and previously in Farsley. Benton Park School in Rawdon and the primary school in Farnley were also used for filming. Interiors are primarily filmed at Yorkshire Television's Emmerdale Production Centre in Leeds, next to Yorkshire's Leeds Studios.[66]

Four farms have been featured on Emmerdale over the years:

Emmerdale's first sponsor (from 14 December 1999 to 20 February 2002) was Daz detergent,[67] followed by Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Heinz salad cream from May 2003 to May 2005, a deal that cost Heinz £10 million.[68] Reckitt Benckiser took over until 2009 in another £10 million deal, advertising Calgon, Air Wick, Veet, and Lemsip.[69] After reports of Littlewoods pulling out of a two-year deal, Tombola Bingo underwrote the show from November 2009 to March 2012,[70] followed by Bet365 Bingo until March 2014.[71] McCain Foods began a two-year £8 million sponsorship on 7 April 2014.[72] Then on 15 April 2020, the People's Postcode Lottery took over as sponsor of the programme.[73] Two years later, Confused.com replaced the People's Postcode Lottery as Emmerdale's sponsor.[74]

As of 2022, Emmerdale generally attracts an average of 5 million viewers.[75] During the 1990s, the series had an average of 10–11 million viewers per episode. On 30 December 1993, Emmerdale had its largest-ever audience of 18 million when a plane crashed into the village.[8] On 27 May 1997, 13 million viewers saw Frank Tate (Norman Bowler) die of a heart attack after the return of wife Kim (Claire King). On 20 October 1998, 12.5 million viewers saw the Woolpack explode after a fire. Kim Tate's departure from the show on 19 January 1999 was watched by nearly 15 million viewers.[75]

The village storm on 1 January 2004 attracted 11.19 million viewers. 18 May 2004 episode in which Jack was shot by his adopted son, Andy, attracted 8.27 million viewers. On 17 March 2005, 9.39 million watched Shelly Williams fall from the Isle of Arran ferry. Zoe Tate (Leah Bracknell) left the show after 16 years on 22 September 2005 before 8.58 million viewers, marking her departure by blowing up Home Farm. On 13 July 2006, the Kings River house collapse was seen by 6.90 million viewers. Sadie King (Patsy Kensit) and Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) left on 21 September 2006, before an audience of 8.57 million viewers. On Christmas Day 2006, 7.69 million saw Tom King (Kenneth Farrington) murdered on his wedding day. Billy Hopwood (David Crellin) crashed his truck into a lake on 1 February 2007, attracting 8.15 million viewers. The end of the "Who Killed Tom King?" storyline on 17 May 2007, had an audience of 8.92 million.[75]

On 14 January 2010, 9.96 million saw Mark Wylde shot dead by wife Natasha. Natasha's 27 October confession to daughter Maisie attracted an audience of nearly 8 million. On 13 January 2011, 9.15 million saw a fire kill Viv Hope and Terry Woods. The live 40th-anniversary episode on 17 October 2012, drew an audience of 8.83 million. On 16 October 2013, 8.15 million watched Cameron Murray take the occupants of The Woolpack hostage and shoot Alicia. The next day, 7.65 million viewers saw Cameron die.[75] In January 2022, their overnight viewing figures saw Emmerdale become the most watched soap opera in the United Kingdom. They beat Coronation Street, a fellow ITV soap that had consistently beaten Emmerdale in the ratings. The rise in viewers was accredited to Meena's serial killer storyline.[76]

Numerous Emmerdale storylines have been criticised by viewers, due to suggestions that they are too controversial. In March 2022, Leeds Live compiled a list of top storylines that viewers were disgusted by, with the list including Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) having sex with an underage Ollie Reynolds (Vicky Binns), Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins) having a baby with her second-cousin Cain, Aaron Livesy (Danny Miller) assisting a quadriplegic Jackson Walsh (Marc Silcock) to die, Maya Stepney (Louisa Clein) grooming step-son Jacob Gallagher (Joe-Warren Plant) and Pierce Harris (Jonathan Wrather) raping Rhona Goskirk (Zoë Henry).[77]

Another storyline that attracted a strong viewer response is an arc that saw Meena Jutla (Paige Sandhu) be revealed as a serial killer, with her confessing to two off-screen murders, as well as murdering regulars Leanna Cavanagh (Mimi Slinger), Andrea Tate (Anna Nightingale) and Ben Tucker (Simon Lennon). Meena immediately caused division in viewers' opinions from her introduction, and after Meena is revealed to be a serial killer, critics and viewers began to praise the character and Sandhu's acting skills, with many believing Meena had become a "top soap serial killer".[78]

Duncan Lindsay of the Metro described Meena as "the most unique and entertaining soap villain ever" and admitted that he wanted her to get away with her crimes due to her strong presence on Emmerdale.[79] Many viewers praised Meena, and credited her with being the most interesting part of Emmerdale, while some complained about the violence shown in her murderous scenes, with Ofcom receiving hundreds of complaints about her brutality.[80]

Despite criticism, Meena regularly trended on Twitter and garnered an online fandom, the 'Meeniacs', who felt that the soap would not be the same following her exit.[81] Her storyline also increased Emmerdale's ratings to the point of becoming the most-watched soap opera in the United Kingdom.[76] In September 2021, it was announced that Sandhu had been nominated for Best Newcomer and Best Villain at the 2021 Inside Soap Awards. Meena murdering Leanna was also nominated for Best Show-Stopper.[82] Sandhu went on to win the award for Best Villain.[31]