The Riordans was the second Irish soap opera made by Raidio Telefís Éireann. It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny. Its use of Outside Broadcast Units and its filming of its episodes on location rather than in studio, broke the mould of broadcasting in the soap opera genre, and inspired the creation of its British equivalent, Emmerdale Farm by Yorkshire Television in 1972.