week on Rai 1. The same happened with Il paradiso delle signore (Woman's Paradise), a period drama, which ran from 2015 to 2017 in prime-time, and became a daytime period soap opera from 2018. Ireland Television In the early years of RTÉ, the network produced several dramas but had not come close to launching a long-running serial. RTÉ's first television soap was Tolka Row, which was set in urban Dublin. For several years, both Tolka Row and The Riordans were produced by RTÉ; however, the urban soap was soon dropped in favor of the more popular rural soap opera The Riordans, which premiered in 1965. Executives from Yorkshire Television visited during on-location shoots for The Riordans in the early 1970s and in 1972, debuted Emmerdale Farm (now Emmerdale), based on the successful format of the Irish soap opera. In the late 1970s, The Riordans was controversially dropped. The creator of that series would then go on to produce the second of his "Agri-soap" trilogy Bracken, starring Gabriel Byrne, whose character had appeared in the last few seasons of The Riordans. Bracken was soon replaced by the third "Agri-soap" Glenroe, which ran until 2001. As RTÉ wanted a drama series for its Sunday night lineup rather than a soap opera, On Home Ground (2001–2002), The Clinic (2002–2009) and RAW (2010–2013) replaced the agri-soaps of the previous decades. In 1989, RTÉ decided to produce its first Dublin-based soap opera since the 1960s. Fair City, which is set in the fictional city of Carrickstown, initially aired one night a week during the 1989–90 season, and similar to its rural soaps, much of the footage was filmed on location – in a suburb of Dublin City. In 1992, RTÉ made a major investment into the series by copying the houses used in the on-location shoots for an on-site set in RTÉ's Headquarters in Dublin 4. By the early 1990s, it was airing two nights a week for 35 weeks a year. With competition from the UK soap operas, RTÉ expanded Fair City to three nights a week for most of the year and one night a week during the summer in 1996, later expanding to four nights a week and two nights during the summer. Until the early 2000s, the series produced four episodes a week, airing all 52 weeks of the year. Fair City airs Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8.00 p.m. GMT