The long-running CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas gets a reboot next summer and Turner Network Television (TNT) is Texas proud of how it’s shaping up. Sample the new version in an extended trailer here. It’s pretty impressive, repeating the same basic family structure as the groundbreaking 1978 oil drama about the Ewing family that owns and runs a ranch called Southfork. Here, a couple of the previous series’ tykes are all grown up into good boy/bad boy rivals just like J.R. and Bobby Ewing were and I suspect the show’s success will hinge on the youths’ casting and acting abilities. They look too practiced, polished and “Hollywood” to me, and the women don’t have nearly the drive that their predecessors did (at least in the promotional clip) but time will tell. What it looks like they got right is the sense of scope and character and it might turn out better than the CBS show, made by Lorimar, which was dark, sinister and cruel. The photography here looks grand and Patrick Duffy, Larry Hagman and Linda Gray return to their original roles. J.R. still has his untamed eyebrows, Bobby’s still clean-cut and who knows if Sue Ellen has beaten her battle with the bottle. If the 21st century Dallas focuses on the men who drill for oil and aim to make money and the women who love them, and possibly their eco-minded Ewing counterparts, as the promo clip hints, it might just create enough tension to work. The series is scheduled to premiere in summer 2012.
