Emmerdale Emmerdale Emmerdale (known as Emmerdale Farm until 1989) is a 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 is broadcast in every ITV region. The series originally aired during the afternoon until 1978, when it was moved to an early-evening prime time slot in most regions; London and Anglia followed during the mid-1980s. Until December 1988, "Emmerdale" took seasonal breaks;
Emmerdale plane crash White in October 2015. Previously seen as "quaint and slow" compared to other British soap operas, the plane crash was a turning point for "Emmerdale" and marked its "graduation" into a major prime time soap opera. The episode gave "Emmerdale" its highest-ever audience of 18 million. ITV received many complaints as the timing of the storyline was close to the fifth anniversary of the Lockerbie Disaster. According to "The Independent", the episode proved to be "brilliant television", as it "allowed the writers to get rid of much dead wood, and reinvent the soap virtually from scratch." In the 5 January