The Riordans

The Riordans was the second Irish soap opera made by Radio Telifís Éireann (then called Telifís Éireann). It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny. Its use of Outside Broadcast Units and its filming of its episodes on location rather than in studio, broke the mould of broadcasting in the soap opera genre, and inspired the creation of its British equivalent, Emmerdale Farm (now called Emmerdale) by Yorkshire Television in 1972.

Template for Emmerdale Farm

The successful use of OBUs to film The Riordans made international waves in broadcasting, given that all soap operas elsewhere, notably Coronation Street, were entirely studio-based. In the early 1970s, Yorkshire Television, which, aware of the success of The Riordans, was planning its own rural-based soap opera, travelled to Ireland to see how The Riordans was made on location. Its new soap, Emmerdale Farm (in the 1990s renamed Emmerdale) was heavily influenced by what its makers had learnt from watching the making of The Riordans. By the late 1970s and 1980s, first Coronation Street, then EastEnders and most dramatically Brookside were influenced in the their greater use (or in the case of Brookside complete use) of on location filming started by The Riordans and brought to Britain by Emmerdale Farm.

Related Topics:
Yorkshire Television - Emmerdale Farm - 1990s - EastEnders - Brookside - Britain

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~