You know you’re old when the oil barons are getting younger.
The remake
of Dallas has brought us a new breed of Texan magnates who look barely out of
their Lego and I don’t like them one little bit.
At best, Bobby’s son
Christopher is Thunderbirds’ Scott Tracy after a day at the spa; at worst,
Norman Bates after a week of bad bookings. JR’s son John Ross has a walrus
sitting on his face and is about as sexy as . . . well, a walrus sitting on
your face.
John Ross’s and
Christopher’s fathers, who were once such magnetic personalities, are no longer
appealing, either. JR’s eyebrows look as if they need their own Visa to enter
the country, and Bobby looks as if he has had the kind of eye-lift that turns
people Chinese overnight; in fact, his eyes appear to have been eaten by his
forehead. Lucy looks as if she has spent 20 years eating all the pies she never
got to consume when the wind swept the food away every morning on the breakfast
terrace, and all the allegedly glamorous women make a Stepford Wife look like
Personality of the Millennium.
I so, so wanted to
like it; but it is bad. So, so bad. Lame writing, lame acting, and a lame
Bobby, who keeps clutching his leg in pain, as the cancer he is trying to keep
secret takes hold. Sue Ellen appears to be the only character who has survived
the fallout. And Linda Gray still brilliantly plays it for the laugh it always
was.
I first watched
Dallas when it was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 in the afternoon; I think I was
probably its first UK fan. Although I did not know the term soap opera when
growing up, I knew it must be something very, very naughty, because my parents
always sent me to my room when Peyton Place was on.
Never having watched
Coronation Street, I took to Dallas because of the shoulder pads, the pools,
the glamour. It was a world so far removed from my own in South Wales, I could
fantasise about riches, fine clothes, magnificent dinners, and take joy in the
knowledge that for every material wealth these people had, they were still
miserable as hell. That made me happy. Being poor. With no fine clothes. And,
in a bad week, rather hungry.
I specially liked
Dallas’s annual Oil Barons Ball, where the oil magnates would gather to
celebrate the industry but end up fighting and/or murdering each other. WestStar
oil head honcho Jeremy Wendell always featured heavily on these occasions,
though I swear he never washed his shirt from one year to the next.
Dallas lost its
credibility with the “death” of Bobby, quickly resurrected and made the subject
of wife Pam’s dream, when the ratings plummeted following the departure of Patrick
Duffy, who played him.
The biggest problem
was that the sister show, Knot’s Landing, was still in production and had a lot
of episodes in the can; so Bobby’s brother Gary continued to grieve on one
channel, telling everyone how momma had never been the same since Bobby’s
death, and nobody ever bothered to tell him that an entire year had all been in
his head.
But it was the
ludicrousness – the complete lack of believability – that, strangely, made it
work. The new mob are playing it as if they have landed parts in Henry V, and
they are about as menacing as a dead mouse in a Camembert.
After two episodes,
I’ve already wiped it from my “series record”; life really is too short.
And I
really, really don’t want to watch Bobby dying from cancer – well, not unless
he emerges wet and glistening and we discover that it was Christopher’s dream
after all.
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