The 1980s: What The Emmerdale Farm Producers Did - Part 1...

Producer Anne W Gibbons with Arthur Pentelow (Henry Wilks) and Ronald Magill (Amos Brearly) in 1980.

This is Part 1 of a brief look at the changing face of Beckindale in the 1980s - how the various producers of the show guided and moulded Emmerdale Farm/Emmerdale through a decade of tremendous change...

Maurice (Edward Dentith) and Judy Westrop (Jane Cussons) left the show in 1980 - and the workforce at NY Estates was featured as Joe Sugden (Frazer Hines) went to work there as farm manager.

Anne W Gibbons took the chair as Emmerdale Farm's producer in June 1979 and departed in 1983. Ms Gibbons began stamping her mark on the show in 1980, recasting the characters of Jack Sugden and Dolly Skilbeck - Clive Hornby and Jean Rogers debuted in the roles in February and April 1980.

1980 - new Jack, new Dolly.

In the summer of 1980, Ms Gibbons oversaw the completion of the transition of Seth Armstrong from peripheral to central character as he became a regular at The Woolpack. She also oversaw the recasting and rewriting of the Merrick family. Out went Ruth Merrick, mother of three, to be replaced by Pat Merrick (Helen Weir), mother of two - Jackie (Ian Sharrock) and Sandie (Jane Hutcheson). Edward Peel made a fiercesome Tom Merrick.

In September 1980, Ms Gibbons' reign saw the arrival of Al Dixon as Walter of The Woolpack.

Say nowt - the fabulous Walter, played by Al Dixon, from 1980-1985.

Other notable characters introduced by Ms Gibbons included Police Sergeant Ian MacArthur (Martin Dale) in 1980 and Alan Turner (Richard Thorp) in 1982.

1980 was the year that Woolpack premier Amos Brearly (Ronald Magill) gained an allotment and became rather more animated and odd-ball in character!

The Amos '80s were a memorable era - in 1980 he gained an allotment and Seth Armstrong as a Woolpack regular. By 1981, he was gloriously mad.

Alan Turner was originally simply a bit of a slippery customer, selfish and lazy. But in early 1983, the character became rather more unpleasant. The days of the comic partnership between Alan and Seth, and Alan as a character we could at times sympathise with, were yet to come.

Don't trust him, Joe! New Beckindale NY boss Alan Turner arrived at Home Farm in 1982.

The Anne W Gibbons era confronted problems with the architecture of Lindley Farm, in use as Emmerdale Farm house since the show began. The real-life exterior did not match the fictional Emmerdale Farm interior. The Sugdens were often seen to be pushed for space, and yet Lindley Farm house appeared to be very spacious indeed - with what appeared to be good-sized rooms on either side of the front door, and a side door with bedroom windows above.

In 1982, the Emmerdale Farm production team disguised the Lindley Farm side door and windows as a barn and initiated a story-line in which Jack Sugden and Pat Merrick decided to turn the barn into an extension cottage for when they married. Of course, Matt and Dolly Skilbeck finally moved into the extension cottage when it was completed, and the exterior of Lindley Farm house then corresponded far better to the fictional interior layout of Emmerdale Farm - the only remaining mystery being the window to the left of the front door. The window to the right was supposedly the parlour. But no other room was ever mentioned in the story-line as far as I'm aware.

Perhaps the most controversial story-line of the Anne W Gibbons era was the teenage pregnancy of Sandie Merrick in 1983. The whole Merrick storyline was actually quite daring back in those days - with Tom and Pat splitting up (Pat endured a beating from Tom in 1981) and Jackie torching the caravan the family had lived in before Pat's marriage to Jack in 1982.

Tempestuous Beckindale teens of the 1980s - Jackie burns the caravan and Sandie confides in Annie Sugden about her pregnancy.

By the end of the Anne W Gibbons era in 1983, Emmerdale Farm had undergone many changes. With the highly subversive and influential Brookside serial underway on Channel 4 from November 1982, and with the opening years of the 1980s being a time of turbulence and great change (as indeed was the rest of the decade), many more changes would be seen in Beckindale as Richard Handford took the producer's chair from 1983-1986.

Anne W Gibbons went on to produce the Beiderbecke Affair.

Anne W Gibbons - Taking Emmerdale Farm In To The '80s...

This photograph was captioned: Producer Anne Gibbons discusses a point in the script with Henry and Amos. "Henry and Amos" were, of course, in reality, Arthur Pentelow and Ronald Magill.

From The Hotten Courier, YTV Emmerdale Farm promotional material, September, 1980:

PROGRAMME PRODUCER LOOKS FORWARD TO A PRODUCTIVE NEW SEASON

By Our Television Correspondent

On completion of her first full year as Producer of 'Emmerdale Farm', Anne Gibbons looks forward to her second with a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement. As she told me...

"Considerable work and effort goes into a twice weekly series like 'Emmerdale Farm'. It's worth pointing out that that for this new season, which begins transmission in September, production started in June, and pre-production work began as far as back as last December. When a draft of the proposed shape of the new series was drawn up, I had meetings with the creator Kevin Laffan, Executive Producer Michael Glynn, Script Editor Michael Russell and the scriptwriters who are to be involved in writing the 44 episodes.

In March, the first writer submitted his proposed storyline for the first six episodes, and the new season was underway and had automatically slipped into gear.

The first production team joined at the beginning of June, as the first six scripts were finalised and broken down into shooting order. Locations were found, sets built, props bought and hired, costumes purchased, and graphics ordered. Schedules, call sheets, camera scripts and detailed instructions poured from the 'Emmerdale' office.

We held casting sessions in both Leeds and London to find the right guest artists to be contracted for new roles.

Suddenly, we were moving faster down the production highway.

Production team number one went 'on the road' in June - just as the second team moved in to prepare for the next six episodes.

We were gathering speed and the revs were up.

The third production team is now underway; and with three teams at various stages of production with a total of 18 episodes, and a further 18 scripts discussed, commissioned and in the pipe-line, we are cruising along in top gear.

An extension to the hours in a day, or even days in the week would be very welcome - overdrive perhaps!"

Bugle Note:

Anne W Gibbons produced Emmerdale Farm from 1979 to 1983, spanning the show's tenth anniversary in October 1982. It was Ms Gibbons' task to take Emmerdale Farm well and truly into the 1980s - and all of us here at The Bugle think she did a grand job!

Richard Handford And Stuart Doughty - Two Producers Of 1980s Emmerdale Farm

The producers of Emmerdale Farm in the 1980s were as follows:

Anne W. Gibbons (1979 to 1983)

Richard Handford (1983 to 1986)

Michael Russell (1986 to 1988)

Stuart Doughty (1988 to 1991)

Here we present the views of two Emmerdale Farm producers of the 1980s - Richard Handford is first, in an article from the Yorkshire Evening Post 1985 supplement, Emmerdale Farm 1,000!

IT’S NOT A SOAP OPERA IT’S DRAMA - SAYS THE PRODUCER

“Emmerdale Farm” is more than just another time-consuming soap opera. Ever since its conception by time-honoured writer Kevin Laffan, the series has had a message to give to its millions of fans.

That message, says producer Richard Handford, latest in 13 years to wear the mantle, is that it should always be “warm and caring.”

“Most of the characters,” he says, “adhere to moral values. And it’s bound to stay that way.”

Richard, who read English at Cambridge and spent nearly every night at the cinema, is the sixth producer of “Emmerdale” and has been responsible for 200 of the 1,000 episodes.

He admits that there has been a hardening of the storylines from the cosy fireside yarns and sheep shearing shots that introduced Beckindale to a nation obviously gasping for a breath of fresh country air.

“At one time everybody was good,” he says. “Now we are challenging traditional values.”

Challenging these values has meant introducing such modern traits which obviously effect both urban and rural communities, as extra-marital affairs. The sort of thing that makes Annie Sugden clank her pans on the solid-fuel kitchen range.

But it’s only done to reflect life as it really is, Richard insists.

“I don’t do it to pull in viewers,” he says. “Jack’s affair was a good story that we could deal with well. And I wanted to show that life isn’t all that easy

“It can happen to anyone. It’s just that some of us are lucky, but we can’t hide away from the fact that some aren’t.”

Jack’s little romp - a great departure for the clean-cut Sugdens - surprised the “Emmerdale” team by bringing “very few” compaints. “I think there were about twelve,” Richard recalls.

The changes in modern values must come through in the programme, he says. “For instance, nobody now expects their children to be virtous until marriage.

“Annie, who sets ther moral tone for her family, has had to be challenged with these problems.”

When Richard looks to the future, he says it would be impossible to predict what’s going to happen In the next 1,000 episodes. “Why change the tone for the sake of it,” he says.

But one thing is certain. It will always be a happy programme.

“It always has been, both on and off the set,” says Richard. “It shows in the way the artistes keep coming back for more.”

“People will bust a gut for the programme. They really believe in it, seriously and passionately.
“We’re not a soap opera. We believe we’re a long-running drama.”

And on to Stuart Doughty - an article from the Hotten Courier, Yorkshire Television's Emmerdale Farm programme publicity, summer 1988:

No big shake-up says the farm’s new boss

Former “Brookside” producer Stuart Doughty has crossed the Pennines to join Yorkshire Television’s top serial, “Emmerdale Farm”.

But Stuart, who took over the reins in January, has no wish to turn life down on the farm into a “rural ‘Brookside’”.

“I haven’t any plans to urbanise it and fill ‘Emmerdale’ full of social problems,” says Stuart.

During his two-and-a-half-year spell on the Channel 4 series, set in Liverpool, storylines included a fatal gun siege, rape, suicide and the first AIDS sufferer in a British soap.

But, though he won’t radically alter the formula that has made “Emmerdale Farm” a TV favourite, with a regular 12 million viewers per episode, Stuart admits he doesn’t want to see things standing still.

He sees the future as one of evolution rather than revolution. “Any serial has got to move with the times. If it stops it will become old-fashioned and out of touch with its viewers,” he says.

“Soaps must reflect life. They have to keep in touch with real life, otherwise viewers regard them as fantasy.”

He certainly believes it would be wrong for British soaps to become as escapist as “Dallas” or “Dynasty”, in which the characters are unbelievably rich and beautiful.

“British soaps tend to portray ordinary people in everyday situations,” he says.

Stuart, 38, has a varied broadcasting background. After university, he joined the BBC’s Overseas Service.

Then, after a brief spell as an actor - when he worked with Andrew Burt, who played the original Jack Sugden - he began supplying quiz questions for “University Challenge”.

This eventually led to a job with Granada as a researcher.

Moving on, Stuart became an associate producer at Granada, responsible for dramas like “Crown Court”, “A Kind Of Loving” and “The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes”. In 1985, he went to Mersey Television to become Bookside’s producer.

Now, Stuart believes he’s the first soap producer to make the move from one serial to another.