The absolute very first time I began to watch Dallas was the first season it hit our screens back in 1978. Every generation has its favourite drama shows and sitcoms which burn brightly and then disappear (some more quickly and dignified than others – you know who you are, Crossroads) but Dallas clung on with its constant stream of kidnappings, shootings, cancer scares and, er, bad dreams to retain our attention.
The way I'd describe Dallas to my kids is that it’s just like Friends if any of the characters were actually friends.....or even vaguely liked each other. Especially the married ones. To be clear, that's 'just like Friends' not 'Just Good Friends' with Paul Nicholas and Jan Francis (we know he jilted you at the altar, Penny, but he's a lovable rogue so JUST GET BACK TOGETHER).
A lot of Dallas' success in the UK was down to Terry Wogan who would give a round-up of the events at Southfork every week on his Radio 2 show (not that we listened to it in our household - I was too young for Radio 2 and my folks were too old which is one of the many downsides of being conceived by mistake late in life….the other major one being the revelation that you were the consolation prize when your Dad’s rugby team got hammered 106-0 in the cup).
Although coining the nickname ‘Poison Dwarf’ for a young girl would get you thrown off air nowadays, Terry’s jibes were generally as good-natured as the digs he made at the Eurovision Song Contest set-up which transformed what would otherwise have been the worst TOTP line-up ever into something approaching cult status. As the great Europhile himself said: “that’s the whole point of it, of course, to sneer at foreigners” (which would probably get him sacked today too). Not be outdone, his fellow countryman, Graham Norton, has proved a worthy successor on several occasions, not least this year when he introduced the German entry as “marmite…if everyone hated marmite”.
I remember the opening credits of Dallas pretty well – the aerial shots of one of the least photogenic cities in the world with virtually no landmarks of any note, forcing them to focus on the Dallas Cowboys stadium which meant nothing to anyone in the UK unless they happened to have watched Debbie Does Dallas. Those same purveyors of adult movies would have felt equally at home with the 'wocka chicka' theme tune, courtesy of that sleazy electric guitar and wah wah pedal combination. Classic 70s porn.
I think the whole nation liked to watch how the other half lived - To The Manor Born was a big UK success at the same time - and what shocked us the most (in both shows to be honest) was just how incredibly tight-fisted these wealthy sorts were. My mum and dad, like many post-war parents, still thought we were in rationing (like lockdown but you weren't allowed to eat-in either) and so took JR’s careful approach with money as a ringing endorsement of their own parsimonious policy. Xmas presents were an orange, chocolate money and a book from the discount shelf at Woolies, fairy liquid was used in the bath because it was cheaper than Matey and hand-me-downs were obligatory no matter that my older brother was twice as big as me at the same age and my sister’s sports kit was, strictly speaking, more suitable for netball than rugby. If I complained, my mum told me not to be so ungrateful. She'd be sued nowadays for damaging my mental health.
If any of us kids came back late from a sports match and needed picking up (only if we won – we’d have to walk 2 miles home otherwise), we were told to ring from the phone box nearest the school and hang up after the pips sounded without putting in any money. This was when phone boxes contained phones rather than books or defibrillators although they also contained prostitutes’ calling cards and streams of urine so were best avoided....unless, of course, you wanted to ring a brothel or were caught short. Our aborted call was the signal for mum or dad to collect us and it saved 2p every time, meaning that, by the end of our time at school, we’d probably saved enough to buy a strawberry mivvi between the 3 of us.
Back to the Ewings though. The question about who shot JR gripped the nation, fuelled by a tabloid frenzy on a par with Freddie Starr's unusual eating habits and Harry & Meghan's reluctant waiver of their privacy to make a few constructive comments about the people who'd either funded or attended their lavish wedding. I assumed initially that, being set in Dallas, it was probably Lee Harvey Oswald or the bloke on the grassy knoll but it was actually Kristin….sorry, spoiler alert, it was actually Kristin. He got shot again just over 30 years later when Larry Hagman himself died in real life. Both actor and character had the Dallas theme tune played at their respective funerals. I've told my kids I want 'Big Mouth Strikes Again' played at mine. It's probably my 2nd favourite Smiths track but I reckon it would be a little too odd to have 'Am I still ill?' sung when I'm lying there dead. 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' on the other hand though...
After JR's shooting, the next major controversy was the death of Bobby Ewing. This came as a welcome relief to those of us who’d seen him and his odd way of swimming in Man from Atlantis and so agreed with Terry Wogan that he was “the wettest thing ever to come out of the sea”. It was a joy to see Pam, the lovely Victoria Principal (now a skincare business entrepreneur apparently), liberated from her crushingly-boring relationship. Like Opal Fruits, she was made to make our mouths water and so deserved better. And then what happened? The whole series turned out to be a dream because the American viewing public were clearly far bigger Patrick Duffy fans than us Brits were. In those days, it was quite rare for public opinion to reverse a decision made by the TV bosses. Nowadays it just takes a couple of negative tweets and the whole programme's cancelled.
Those same TV Executives ended up colluding with the competition to create some hype around the Dallas vs Dynasty rivalry to lift ratings – although Oasis & Blur's record companies showed them how to orchestrate it far more effectively a few years later. It didn't really work in our household - we preferred home-grown drama with gritty storylines like Penelope Keith's struggle to win back her family home and could only take so much US glamour and intrigue – but I gather the introduction of Joan ‘Alexis’ Collins and her American football-style shoulder pads in series 2 of Die-Nasty was a game-changer.
There were plenty of other US drama shows at the time – Falcon Crest, the Waltons, Bonanza – but none of them got the family together around the TV quite like Dallas. And largely thanks to Terry Wogan, we had a good laugh about it every week too. If only Eurovision was on more often than once a year. Actually, on the other hand, ignore that thought.
There were 357 episodes of Dallas and a further 344 more of the spin-off series, Knots Landing. That’s 700 hours of our lives. In contrast, Crossroads ran for 4500 episodes plus the ill-fated extra 320 in 2001-3 which proved such a shitshow that it was brought to a merciful close with the revelation that the whole of the 2 year revival had been dreamed up by Jane Asher's character. One of Dallas' less-welcome legacies. 'Oh fudge' was Jane's final line. Very fitting.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME......70s/80s ONE HIT WONDERS
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