Dallas Is Back – You’re Not Dreaming: Let’s Just Hope It Reawakens Dynasty
DALLAS is to make a return to the telly. The US soap opera that between 1978 and 1991 charted the lives of the Ewings cattle and oil family, of the Southfork Ranch in Texas – introducing us to The Oil Barons’ Ball and a scheming secretary called Sly (no-one said it was subtle) – is coming back.
Does the telly need Dallas? Anorak has spent the last few moments working out that because of the money paid on the compulsory licence fee, a one-hour screening of the 1980s soap opera will cost us 0.00019p. It is 0.0012p cheaper than EastEnders. You might think, makes is appear a sound investment. But, then, an apple in Marks & Spencer – one of those big shiny ones hand-picked by Brazilian virgins wearing gloves made from kid goat perineums – costs around 42p. And, you know what, we’d go without 30,216 episodes of EastEnders for one bite of that apple.
And no soap opera is free. Hollyoaks, Crossroads’ bastard child, is on Channel 4 – you pay for that in your licence fee. And there’s Coronation Street on ITV, a show now so firmly locked in its own past that it resembles a swirling bath tubs of soapy water making its way round and round life’s plug hole.
So. What of the new Dallas? Well, the old one never ended with a health warning reminding the institutionalised and those who inhabit the hazy world between fiction and reality that if they have been affected by anything on the show they can call a phone number and be handled by understanding types with massive needles and TV producers congratulating themselves on dystopian portrayal of REAL life for REAL people. The old Dallas never pretended to be real. It was escapism. When Bobby Ewing emerged from the shower to prove that the last series had been a dream, we liked the idea of television not pretending to be anything other than a huge irrelevant lie concocted for our slack-jawed entertainment.
Will the news show be so fanciful? Faces will be familiar – Larry Hagman (JR) Linda Gray (grinding-jawed Sue-Ellen), Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewiing – see! He did work again!) and Priscilla Presley will be stitched up, injected and dusted off.
All to the good. But what we really want – and do, please, let it happen – is for Dallas to return and thus trigger the reawakening of the greatest soap opera of them all: Dynasty.
That was the show as far removed for reality as Hello! magazine photo shoot with Zog from the planet Xzog…
Posted: 11th, July 2011 | In: TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
