Риорданы: Ирландская сага о фермерской семье.

The Riordans was the second Irish television drama serial made by Raidio Telefís Éireann (then called Telefís Éireann). It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny. Its location filming with Outside Broadcast Units, rather than using only TV studios, 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.

The show was called The Riordans after the name of the central family, consisting of the middle aged parents, Tom and Mary, and their oldest son, Benjy, as well as the latter's siblings Michael and Jude, who had left farming for other careers and had more adventurous personal lives. Other leading characters included the family doctor, his Protestant gentry born wife, the (radical Vatican II oriented) Catholic priest, the conservative Church of Ireland rector, the local pub owner, some nomadic Irish Travellers and others.

In 1964 the fledgling Telefís Éireann had launched Tolka Row, a soap opera set in a working class part of Dublin. Its success was immediate, with its actors becoming household names. One year later, aware that Ireland was still a largely rural country, and of the immense popularity of rural based radio shows on RTÉ Radio (then called Radio Éireann), notably The Kennedys of Castleross, Telefís Éireann decided to create a new rural soap opera, set on a family farm. Located in Dunboyne, The Flathouse, owned by the Connolly family, was the setting for this programme. Christopher Fitz Simons was the show's first executive producer. The drama was written by James Douglas and later Wesley Burrowes, who derived much of his inspiration from engaging with and observing the lives of the locals in Kells, County Kilkenny. Part of the success of the series was because many of the leading actors were themselves from the background they represented. John Cowley, who played the patriarch of the family, Tom Riordan was from real farming stock in Ardbraccan in County Meath and many of the issues his character had to deal with reflected his own life experiences in rural Ireland. Actor Tom Hickey, who played Benjy was from County Kildare in the midlands and also had personal experience of life in the part of the country in which the programme was set. Among the many series writers were James Douglas (the creator of the show), Wesley Burrowes, Pat O'Connor, Eugene McCabe, and Tom Coffey.

The Riordans proved to be a revolutionary television programme, both in Ireland and internationally. Its most dramatic innovation was in the use of OBUs (Outside Broadcast Units) to film most of each episode on location in the countryside. This was a marked innovation. Previously soap operas had all been studio based, with even supposed exterior filming all done with studio sets built in sound stages. On location filming was up to that point avoided for technical and financial reasons; firstly, it was reliant on weather conditions, which meant it was difficult to manage costs. Secondly, costs of transporting sets, wardrobe, cameras and film made on location shooting more expensive, while the extra time involved in transporting edited footage back to studio, in the days before satellite links, also meant that on location shoots, unless taking place beside the studio, were avoided. Thirdly, recording sound was thought to be more complicated in an open environment, and much easier on closed studio sound stages. Telefís Éireann decided however to film most of The Riordans on location given that creating a farm set was not possible around the Dublin city studios at Montrose. Even if space had been available, it would have been impossible to mask the city sounds (traffic, aeroplanes overhead, Garda Síochána (police) sirens, etc.). However to speed up the process of getting the film back to studio for editing, it filmed the programme on a farm near Dunboyne in County Meath, even though it set it in County Kilkenny, which was further away. In 1975 the programme began to be filmed and transmitted in colour, having been available in monochrome only up to then.

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 1989 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 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.

Irish broadcasting in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the clash of ideas between elements of traditional rural Catholic society and new liberal ideas coming from the United States, Britain and Catholicism itself through the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Conservatives within RTÉ associated with the Knights of Columbanus clashed with liberals and with Marxists associated with Official Sinn Féin, over the content of programmes, though the extent to which the ultimate liberal victory was a product of one side infiltrating the station more successfully than the other is disputed, with one academic saying that the liberal win represented only the triumph of the 'liberal consensus'. However, then leading OSF intellectual Eoghan Harris suggests that left wing radicalism was of crucial importance in shaping RTÉ's output in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Riordans tackled many 'conservative versus liberal' issues from its very start. Its start coincided with the coming into force of the Succession Act which for the first time granted to the wife of a farmer an automatic right of succession to the family farm, so removing the danger that after her husband's death she could be left with nothing, with the property being willed to a total stranger. The issue was at the time controversial; banks until the 1970s would not allow a wife to open a bank account except with the approval of her husband. Conservatives suggested that the new Act, which had been pushed through in the face of opposition by then Minister for Justice Charles Haughey, would undermine the traditional family and lead to the sale of a farm owned by a family, were a farmer's marriage to break up. Liberals argued that the reform was one of social justice and a long overdue recognition of the rights of farmers' wives. In the words of academic Dr Finola Kennedy, The Riordans "introduced one of the most sensitive issues in rural family life – the links between property, farm ownership and marriage at the very time of the debate on the Succession Bill". The show also focused on a range of farming issues, from the promotion of new farm technology to safety on farms. In the 1970s, the characters Tom and Benjy featured in a television advertisement urging farmers to have metal framed cabs put onto their tractors to protect themselves from serious injury should the vehicle overturn. Other issues were also raised, such as illegitimacy, poverty, the problems of old age, marriage break up, sexual activity, the dramatic changes in the post Vatican II Catholic Church, and most famously contraception, when it was revealed that Benjy's wife, Maggie, for medical reasons could not risk having a second pregnancy. The decision of the couple to use contraception (the Pill) caused considerable controversy and criticism from "family values" organisations and some in the Catholic Church. The show was on many issues both praised and criticised in the national media and even in Dáil Éireann. Moreover, civil servants in the mid 1960s criticised the image portrayed of a 'farm advisor' sent out to advise farmers on new advances in farming but who in the series was seen drinking in the pub and gossiping.

The final 26 episodes of The Riordans( which were cut in 2 which resulted in 52 30mins episodes) was shown From October 1980 on the various ITV regions for the most part, in most areas, it was shown three times a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 12:30 most regions temporarily dropped Australian wartime drama The Sullivans, which had been aired in that timeslot in most regions, to accommodate The Riordans. In London region, the series was only screen weekly on Monday finishing on 12 October 1981. In the Tyne Tees region, The Sullivans continued to air on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:30, but The Riordans aired on Wednesdays only they gradually fell behind the network as a result. It was dropped from that timeslot after a while only to continue in the 3:45 slot on Tuesday afternoons (a brief narrated refresher course was provided) and carried on in that slot until the final episode. The Riordans was a key development in late 20th century television drama, because, as well as giving RTÉ its first experience of how to create a long running soap opera, its use of OBUs changed the methodology by which later soaps in both Britain and Ireland were made. It embodied the changing Ireland of its period. When it was first broadcast, the reforming Seán Lemass was Taoiseach. When it finished, his son in law the controversial Charles Haughey was months from becoming Taoiseach. The Riordans covered a period of rapid transition in Irish life, from an agrarian, protectionist Ireland of the early 1960s to membership of the European Economic Community and so a rapidly changing rural economy in the 1970s. In the 1960s, Ireland was still rural, conservative and Catholic, with storylines like a character going on the Pill containing a shock value unthinkable a decade later. By the late 1970s, Ireland was becoming less rural, less conservative and less Catholic. Ironically, one of the biggest shock issues of the early show, the use of contraception, became less of a shock when in 1979 the provision of contraception was legalised, albeit with tight controls, in the very year the show was taken off air. The changing nature of Irish society was shown in the soap operas that replaced The Riordans. After the short interregnum Bracken, came Glenroe, another 'rural' show set, unlike The Riordans, on the fringes of a town close to Dublin, with some characters living in an urban housing estate. Even the central characters, a farmer and his father Miley Byrne and Dinny Byrne, blurred the urban and rural worlds in a way that Tom Riordan never did, by turning their farm into an open farm for urban people to visit, and selling their produce in their own shop in the local town. After two decades that show itself was axed, leaving RTÉ with only one major homegrown soap opera, one that has no rural aspect at all, and is set in inner city Dublin, Fair City.

A controversial policy that was in force for the network in the 1960s and 1970s led to the erasing of previous episodes, so that the expensive video that had been used to record them could be reused. As a result, little remains of RTÉ's 1960s output, with shows like The Riordans, The Late Late Show and others routinely wiped after broadcast.

Some of the actors had distinguished careers after the axing of The Riordans. After Bracken Gabriel Byrne went to the United States where he became a successful film actor. Tony Doyle, Father Sheehy, who had left the series in the mid 1970s, became a successful television actor with the BBC, starring in among other shows Ballykissangel, before dying suddenly aged 58 on the brink of his biggest television role yet. John Cowley worked largely in films, playing "the auctioneer" in John B. Keane's The Field with Richard Harris and also on stage. Cowley also continued with his lifelong campaign against coursing and other blood sports. He died in 1998. Annie D'Alton, Minnie Brennan, who was Cowley's much older wife in real life, died in 1983. Chris O'Neill, Michael Riordan, worked for some years as agent for Gabriel Byrne. He died in the United States in 1991. Biddy White Lennon, Maggie Riordan, left acting and became a successful author and publisher of cookery books; she died in November, 2017. Tom Hickey was an acclaimed stage and film actor. He died in May 2021. Moira Deady went on to act in Glenroe, the spin off show that came from Bracken, the spin off from The Riordans. She also starred in a number of films, including Angela's Ashes.

Bracken (1978–1982) created and written by Wesley Burrowes. Glenroe (a spin off from Bracken) (1983–2001) created and written by Wesley Burrowes.