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Emmerdale Farm/Emmerdale has the most unlikely history of all the major
soaps. It began with little fanfare as one of a number of new afternoon ITV
serials. Over its first few years it concentrated on the members of the Sugden
family and their interactions with the other villagers. The series was popular,
partly because of the attractive countryside, but mainly because it was
exceptionally well-written and performed for a show of its type. As the audience
grew, the ITV regions took note, and over a period of years gradually moved the
series into peaktime. This began the improbable evolution of a series which
would eventually challenge EastEnders (BBC, 1985-) in the ratings.
By the 1980s, the production team had increased the number of regular
characters simply because otherwise they were in danger of reusing old stories.
A nearby town - Hotton - was featured more heavily, and the new farming
conglomerate NY Estates was introduced. Gradually the series began to introduce
'racier' storylines, such as Jack Sugden's adultery, and business deals and
management buyouts ran alongside the latest crisis with cattle or sheep. It was
around this point that Les Dawson described the series as "Dallas with dung",
and if this wasn't quite true at the time, the later contrast of the bickering
Tate family with the clownish Dingles certainly made it so.
Once ITV belatedly realised that the show was a success, it decided to
capitalise: in a short time the show was networked; renamed Emmerdale (to lose
the unglamorous connotations of farming); and Brookside (Channel 4, 1982-2003)
creator Phil Redmond was brought in to beef up the storylines. The most famous
of Redmond innovation was the Lockerbie-style plane crash which killed a number
of cast members. This created headlines and also brought censure from the ITC,
but from then on Emmerdale became notorious for its sensational 'event'
episodes, which are still regularly used to this day.
In many ways, Emmerdale has pushed back the boundaries of British soap more
than any other programme: it was the first major soap to move to five episodes a
week; the first to make a storyline fully interactive (the killing of Tom King);
and it even used a reality show (Soapstars, ITV, 2001) to choose cast members.
This 'try anything' approach has brought frequent success in the ratings, but
arguably at the cost of sacrificing drama and character for sensation and
melodrama.
John Williams
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Complete 1976 episode (24:19)
