Also:
- It's Saturday Night
- 2. An autograph before you go
- 3. A new kind of game show
- 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt
- 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart
- 6. Synthetic propensity
- 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax
- 8. This is your show now
- 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness
- 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less
- 11. Together We’ll Be Ok
- 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s
- 13. Alan is too commercial
- 14. It worked like a dream
- 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks
- 16. Killing the Golden Goose
- 17. People love us to be sexy
- 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle
- 19. They were big in the States and we noted that
- 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults
- 21. A new style of lunatic humour
- 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade
- 23. Thoroughly sinful
- 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked
- 25. Back then it was radical stuff
- 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better
- 27. You'll have to take us as you find us
- 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move
- 29. It's the public that has to pay
- 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces
- 31. Just shoot the bastard
- 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour
- 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning
- 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer
- 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off
- 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all
- 37. Kamikaze Mastermind
- 38. We haven’t moved into luxury
- 39. We are investing in people
- 40. Delivered impeccably
- 41. He has to allow you to do your bit
- 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point
- 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas
- 44. Let’s get straight into this
- 45. Unedifying Greed
- 46. We’ve got the fucking lot!
- 47. Scope for humour and danger
- 48. Pure Megablast
- 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else
- 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous
- 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo!
- 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing
- 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it
- 54. We would be the spoilsports
- 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television
- 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him
- 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts?
- 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time
- 59. The plumply pretty female duo
- 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him
- 61. More pilots than British Airways
- 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC
- 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto
- 64. Things Look Very Precarious
- 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time
- 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that
- 67. Well bottom’s not funny
- 68. We Are The Funnymen
- 69. The powers that be listened to Denis
- 70. Stretchers never go up stairs
- 71. I was in obscurity until this series
- 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me
- 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now
- 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!'
- 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you
- 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1!
- 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge
- 78. You wanna bet on it?
- 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic
- 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade
- 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage
- 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television
- 83. Beadle’s A Prick
- 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut
- 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery?
- 86. He's not a goody- goody hero
- 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases
- 88. The feel of Saturday night
- 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem
- 90. It were a right smack in the face
- 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise
- 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim
- 93. The characters and situations are real
- 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans
- 95. A Double Order of Talent
- 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine
- 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms!
- 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here
- 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered!
- 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people!
- 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience
- 102. Like a cup of cold sick
- 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine
- 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings
- 105. It is in the cutlery drawer
- 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night
- 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game
- 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series
- 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo
- 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him
- 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television
- 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits!
- 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’
- 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want
- 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition
- 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
- 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame
- 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation
- 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us
- 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea?
- 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere
- 122. This Time, You Decide
- 123. King of trash, that’s me
- 124. It’s about rejection now
- 125. They lost what Popstars was all about
- 126. Win the ads
- 127. A name in search of a series
- 128. Getting grief from the papers
- 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television
- 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years
- 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense
- 132. The trip of a lifetime
- Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?
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While the BBC wasn’t keen to ape American dramas, it wasn’t entirely dismissive of them either. On 5 September 1976, the long-running series about three siblings who inherited a haulage firm, The Brothers, drew to a close. For the previous four years it had entertained viewers with boardroom backbiting and avarice. Playing on mainly Friday or Sunday nights, The Brothers drew an avid audience keen to observe the machinations of a group of characters behaving abominably, and doing all sorts of things that the average viewer knew they could never get away with.
The arrival of Dallas then in 1978 may in retrospect look to have been a cost-efficient replacement. There was much about it that reflected the boardroom and bedroom battles of The Brothers, yet of course, the series – American in origin – had not been influenced by the BBC haulage drama in any way. Having originally pitched the US network, CBS, a show called Knots Landing, New York writer David Jacobs was advised that his idea was “too middle-class and tame” and was asked to come up with something bigger and brasher and to have it feature actress Linda Evans.
A self-confessed “unreconstructed novelist”, Jacobs envisaged Dallas as a serial dealing with issues of isolation and corruption. He found programmes such as The Waltons’ constant need to remind the viewer of what had gone on in previous episodes to be incredibly frustrating and so initially each episode of Dallas was to be self-contained. The show’s lead actor Larry Hagman was able to recognise the series’ essential ingredients right from the first script. “Dallas was Romeo and Juliet set among the oil fields, except there wasn’t one likeable character in the entire episode. Not one nice person. For television at the time, that was a real breakthrough. Mama was an old bitch. Daddy was an alcoholic asshole. My little brother was a womaniser. And my character, JR Ewing, was a combination of all of them”.
While the various shenanigans made for – what one reviewer described as – “steamy drama … on the arid Texas plain,” this was still not Dallas as we remember it today. As Jacobs admits it was largely down to producer Leonard Katzman that the programme became an international success: “They’re my children,” he reflects of JR, Bobby, Su, Pam, Sue Ellen and the rest, “but I sent them to camp early. If I’d been in charge of Dallas, it would probably not have been the success it is. I have this tendency to bring things down to earth. Dallas is up there. When I went on set I was shocked to see some people taking it seriously. I suppose someone has to. I don’t think I could have.”
Within five weeks, the series was a hit in America, playing at 10pm on Sunday nights and attracting the 12th largest audience of the week. The series abandoned self-contained stories in favour of a traditional episodic structure, beloved of soaps. In 1978 Dallas was offered to ITV, during an autumn Los Angeles buying trip. But Paul Fox (chairman of the network’s Film Purchase Group) and Leslie Halliwell (who, although an employee of Granada Television, bought overseas material for the network) turned it down. They saw the pilot only after they had purchased as much American programming as their budget would permit. This left the course clear for the BBC. On the strength of the same pilot episode, Bill Cotton and head of acquisitions, Gunnar Rugheimer snapped the series up just a couple of days later.
In the UK, Dallas began its inexorable rise in the ratings from day one. Scheduling the series at the weekend was in keeping with the tradition established by The Brothers, but running it on a Saturday night suited the show’s brash approach. It is felt that Dallas’ first two series were, by and large, more realistic then those that followed. However, one prominent British broadcaster was quick to lampoon the Texan soap opera from day one. “Rightly or wrongly,” says Terry Wogan “I was perceived in the BBC as the main architect in the runaway success of Dallas with the British viewing public. The rumour had started on my Radio 2 morning programme, with a few observations from me concerning the apparent fact that, although richer than Croesus, the Ewing family of Dallas had only one telephone – in the hall; that they had walk-in wardrobes, but only wire coat-hangers … The listeners, bless ‘em, responded; Dallas became a cult, and then a full-blown ratings winner”. Wogan was grateful for the easy copy the show provided him. “It was like a weekly Eurovision Song Contest,” he reminisces. “Over the top, full of ridiculous characters, deeply, deeply foolish … and riveting to watch … Americans watched Dallas from an entirely different viewpoint than we did. They thought it was a drama series of everyday Texan oil-billionaires; we thought it was a comedy. We were right”.
Katzman’s decision to end the first series on a cliff-hanger was pivotal in ensuring Dallas’ long-term success. Sue Ellen escaped from a mental hospital and ended up in a coma after crashing a car and prematurely giving birth. As the curtain came down on Dallas’ first season the question was posed: “Would baby and mother survive?” The pivotal moment in the show’s history came a year later when the decision was made to have the series’ lead character and main “bad guy,” JR, shot. “CBS made a request for four additional episodes, something practically unheard of so late in the year,” Hagman recalls. “But Dallas was the sixth-highest-rated show. The network wanted to keep up the momentum and take advantage of more advertising income. Mr Katzman and his writing staff plotted out the new shows, and as the story goes, when they began discussing the cliff-hanger, now a part of the Dallas formula, someone said, ‘Why don’t we just shoot the bastard?’”.
Next Monday: Britain could be facing its darkest hour
George White
March 26, 2018 at 8:48 am
Rugheimer not Ruggenheimer (an ex-RTE man who weirdly enough, helped discover Tel in the first place), and Linda Gray not Evans, surely.
TV Cream
March 26, 2018 at 8:57 am
Fixed! Thanks, George.
Jack Kibble-White
April 7, 2018 at 2:35 pm
Actually it WAS Linda Evans, so that’s going to get changed back (see a future instalment for more on this)
George White
April 7, 2018 at 9:25 pm
Ah yes, you’re right.
Actually, this makes total sense.
Lorimar, Dallas’ producers did try to push her in a few films.
Because they did Avalanche Express with her, which isn’t a good film because both Robert Shaw and the director, Mark Robson died in post-production, it does have a room decorated with pictures of Cyril Shaps as a plotpoint, though.
Glenn Aylett
April 8, 2018 at 12:35 pm
Dallas was originally a vehicle for Linda Evans, but when she dropped out, it was Linda Gray who took her place. Both Lindas did do well in their respective roles, of course.
I was 12 when Dallas mania took off in Britain. Compared with Crossroads wobbly sets and ham acting and Coronation St in its cat gone missing for six episodes phase, Dallas was light years ahead. By the shooting of JR phase, nearly half the population was watching, and it was as big a talking point as the state of the economy. Not until the Neighbours boom 8 years later did an imported show become so popular.
Glenn Aylett
March 26, 2018 at 7:13 pm
Wasn’t the first series of Dallas shown on weekday nights and wasn’t very popular, and the show didn’t become a massive hit until it was moved to Saturdays in 1979? Then I’m sure it was moved again to weekdays in the spring of 1980, by which time Dallas was so big it didn’t matter, and then moved back to Saturdays in the fall of 1980, with over 20 million viewers finding out who shot JR.
Richard16378
March 27, 2018 at 5:44 pm
I remember it was on weekdays (I think Wednesdays) in 1981-2, as my Mum would try to finish my bedroom story by the end of the theme tune then go downstairs to watch it.
Glenn Aylett
March 30, 2018 at 4:45 pm
@ Richard 16378, it tended to alternate between Saturdays and Wednesdays, although after 1981, Dallas was a weekday show as BBC1 had bought Dynasty for Saturday nights. Dynasty never quite hit the ratings heights of Dallas, pulling in 12 million against 17 million for Dallas, but was decent enough for a BBC that was starved of Saturday night hits in the Alan Hart era.
I will admit to being a Dallas nut in 1980, even buying the novelty record I Hate JR and getting the car sticker I Shot JR.
George White
March 31, 2018 at 9:58 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LquisisqXGM Did you encounter this 1981 Irish hit by TR Dallas, surprisingly not a one hit wonder, and the brother of Allen as in Foster and.
Country and Irish music is one of the most prolific sins to sound.
Glenn Aylett
March 31, 2018 at 12:25 pm
Oh yes, it was dire, but it was amazing how much mileage country music got out of singing about JR Ewing at the time. Somehow singing about a Coronation St character wouldn’t be the same.
It’s amazing now to think that an imported series could attract nearly half the population and be a talking point for months on end. Yet Dallas was a brilliantly made, excellently written series with strong characters and was light years ahead of our soaps.
George
March 31, 2018 at 5:31 pm
Went to Castleblayney, where many of the country and Irish acts are from and realised, “Nah. There isn’t really anything to say about country n Irish. THAT is why there is so little written, why RTE/BBC NI docusoap Stetsons and Stilettos is the way it is – covering tractors and trucking festvials as well as jiving, why Margo’s book when not hinting at dodgy business is mostly boasts about US stars. YES, there might be a few freakish relics (Radio Luxembourg DJ/RTE music show producer Pat Campbell’s The Deal probably the most notorious) but everyone is dead, old or uninteresting. Everything that’d been or needs to be said behind the scenes has been said. There are stories but they are tied into the troubles. Plus everyone takes it far too seriously. On the bus up I met by an expat Dub who told me not to be so flippant because the locals don’t see it as a bit of light ent fluff but something akin to a religious experience, because like late era Northern Soul, it is the dancing that counts. They call it the Vegas of Ireland, but I noted that Branson was a fairer comparison. She also said that never tell a boyfolk act they are not country or they will get very angry.
There’s really two varieties of Irish country – the old stuff that began in the showband scene, Big Tom, Philomena Begley, Daniel O’Donnell, his sister Margo, Foster and Allen, Larry Cunningham, the sort of Irish acts who’d appear on Sing Country, and get played by Wally Whyton. Mostly awful or middling material – usually covers (usually tied to a certain act – Philomena Begley to Billie Jo Spears, while TR focused himself on Mac Davis songs), with a few tacky but catchy songs like Lovely Leitrim, but performed by decent cabaret performers who if saddled with better material, may have gone onto more than national fame.
Then, there’s the younger crop – it began in the early 2000s with Michael Fallon – alias Mike Denver – a cowboy-hatted, peroxide-tipped Galwegian, and Michael English, a protege of O’Donnell’s, and a sort of Eoin McLove type who briefly got picked up by Louis Walsh due to the latter’s mother being a fan. Then, Nathan Carter came on the scene – a young, still in his teens Liverpool singer of Irish extraction who moved to Ulster, and started singing and talking in a strange Scouse-Irish-American twang, like Ronnie Whelan in reverse via Route 66. Carter somehow broke through via a cover of Darius Rucker/Old Crow Medicine Show’s reworking of Bob Dylan’s half-written ditty Wagon Wheel, which became this unavoidable hit all over rural areas – touring in stadiums in the cities as well as small country hotels, and appealing to young housewives as well as grans, though he does have a foothold in the latter, with his strange obsession with his nana – who goes everywhere with him. Think R Wayne in Britain’s Got the Pop Factor… Carter has spawned a slew of copycats, mostly failed boybanders and failed rappers whose careers failed, and country is an easy way out. People like Derek Ryan, Lee Matthews, or farmers who reckoned themselves good singers and got money via suspicious means like Marty Mone and Eamonn Jackson (outed as a puppy farmer) and talent show runner-up Jim Devine. Mone’s Hit the Diff, a sort of sub-Wurzels ditty about tractors – not so much a song but a a list of adjectives that roughly describe the movements of a tractor being shouted at in a broad Monaghan/Ulster border accent. Country music should be heart and soul, but this isn’t. These singers have no sense of humour – singing comical songs seriously (Ex-All-Ireland Talent Show runnerup (imagine Britain’s Got Talent in the style of the First Division – with Dana and Shane of Boyzone and a few regional TV hosts) Cliodhna Hagan’s We’re All Gonna Die Someday has the ring of a Not the Nine O’Clock News parody – but apparently was a cover of an Aussie song from the late 90s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YyF1l6D64), think they’re singing country, the amount of insincerity and insecurity in the scene is huge. And promoters tapping into the jiving scene which exits really only in the Northern border area are using this. Music to dance to, not listen to. Basically, it’s akin to Northern Soul. If the likes of the Highwaymen are Motown, then this stuff is Wayne Gibson and Wigan’s Ovation, or the Eric Winstone Orchestra with the Joe 90 theme.
George
April 1, 2018 at 7:34 pm
There’s really two varieties of Irish country – the old stuff that began in the showband scene, Big Tom, Philomena Begley, Daniel O’Donnell, his sister Margo, Foster and Allen, Larry Cunningham, the sort of Irish acts who’d appear on Sing Country, and get played by Wally Whyton. Mostly awful or middling material – usually covers (usually tied to a certain act – Philomena Begley to Billie Jo Spears, while TR focused himself on Mac Davis songs), with a few tacky but catchy songs like Lovely Leitrim, but performed by decent cabaret performers who if saddled with better material, may have gone onto more than national fame.
Richard16378
March 30, 2018 at 9:00 pm
I remember later in the 1980s the BBC scheduled programmes normally on Sundays on a Saturday. Bergerac & All Creatures Great & Small come to mind.
Glenn Aylett
April 4, 2018 at 7:24 pm
I had to laugh when five foot tall Lucy Ewing( Charlene Tilton) decided to become a model in Dallas, when the minimum height for a model in America is 5 ft 6( 5 ft 4 for Asian Americans). Maybe she wore massive heels, or in the traditions of the show, threatened to bankrupt the modelling agency if they didn’t take her on.