“WHEN most of us get to 50 we start to wind down, contemplate retirement, maybe sneak in a nap in the afternoon. Not so Emmerdale,” says John Whiston, creative director of the Yorkshire soap.
“At 50 it’s defiantly hoisting its skirts up, striding out into whatever the future holds, living its best, most boisterous, full-on life. It’s that kind of a show!
“And if we do cast an eye backwards, the first things that come to mind are those full-on mammoth production numbers that no other show can do, or at least do so well. From the plane crash to the spectacular multi-vehicle motorway pile-up, from a helicopter slamming into the village hall in the middle of a wedding to the lightning strike on The Woolpack, from half the village burning down to the deadly conflagration of the maize maze... there have been a lot of heart-stopping disasters to befall our benighted village.”
This month, disaster comes in the shape of a devastating storm, marking Emmerdale’s half century. “Life in the village will never be the same again,” say producers. The action unfolds in an hour-long episode on Sunday, October 16 - exactly 50 years to the day since the show began.
Emmerdale started as an idea proposed by former actor and playwright Kevin Laffan and was initially intended to fill a lunchtime slot for 13 weeks. The first episode of Emmerdale Farm was on October 16, 1972; launched by Yorkshire Television as “the living story of the Sugden family.”
The first line was spoken by Peggy Skilbeck, who asked her husband: “Matt, who’s she?” She was referring to Marian Wilks, who was out riding as the funeral cortege of Emmerdale matriarch Annie Sugden’s husband, Jacob, went by.
The show was initially filmed in the Dales village of Arncliffe. Early episodes were screened in the village hall, as some of the locals couldn’t pick up ITV on their television sets.
Some scenes were shot near Otley, with the interiors in Leeds studios. Location filming later moved to Esholt, where the Commercial pub exterior was used as the Woolpack.
The ‘farm’ was dropped in November 1989 to reflect the soap’s shift from the Sugdens to the wider community. Emmerdale moved to a 7pm twice weekly slot in January 1990. In 1997 exterior filming moved to the Harewood estate, where a village set was specially built.
Over the years the cast has featured many actors from the district, including Clive Hornby (Jack Sugden), Claire King (Kim Tate), Matthew Wolfenden (David Metcalfe), Duncan Preston (Doug Potts), Bradley Johnson (Vinny Dingle), Kitty McGeever (Lizzie Lakely) and Natalie Anderson (Alicia Gallagher).
An ITV documentary celebrating 50 years of Emmerdale will tell the story of how a sleepy daytime series about rural folk became the Bafta-winning peak-time drama it is today. Over the years, since 1972, there have been family feuds, fires and fights, steamy affairs, murders, kidnappings, explosions, blackmail plots, sham marriages, runaway brides, teenage pregnancies...all in and among the 74 weddings, 43 births and 105 deaths.
Cast members past and present will watch some big scenes from over the past five decades, reflecting on their characters and memories.
John Whiston’s favourite moment was filming a spectacular flood in The Woolpack: “A river we’d never mentioned before burst its banks and flooded the Woolpack cellar, trapping Chas, Debbie, Marlon and a vengeful Cameron in the rapidly rising waters. We filmed it in a special tank in Pinewood where two Hollywood movies also happened to be filming that week.
“But walking into the Pinewood canteen, it was our cast who got mobbed for their autographs, not the movie stars. Move over Tom and Russell - you’re in the way of our selfie with Marlon! It was then I truly realised the power of being in people’s living-rooms six times a week and what a close, precious bond our audience form with our fictional but brilliantly relatable characters.
“But sometimes it’s the quiet moments that really do lodge in your memory. Ashley’s final hours, surrounded by his family and friends dressed as pirates, stuck with me. The poignancy, the sadness, but above all the humanity of a scene like that, produced, written and acted to perfection by a team at the top of their game.” Village vicar Ashley’s dementia storyline spanned two years and a groundbreaking episode, seen through his eyes, is used by the Alzheimer’s Society. Actor John Middleton, who played Ashley, worked with Bradford’s Pathways charity, which supports people with early onset dementia.
Adds John: “Stuff gets thrown at all of us in life. Medical stuff, family stuff, financial stuff, unfair stuff. Emmerdale shows us how other people deal with such troubles, how they courageously meet those troubles head on, together.
“Emmerdale’s not a road map for how we should lead our lives. But it is a sympathetic companion as we all make our individual journeys through life’s inevitable issues and complications. And sometimes it’s just the raucous, rude, in-your-face, funny companion that we need to help us not take ourselves, or life, quite so seriously.”
Pictures: ITV
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