CLASSIC IMAGE: "DALLAS"s FAVOURITE SON: J.R. EWING

Business, brinkmanship and bucks. The three rules that J.R. Ewing loves to live by! Image: LORIMAR.

I'm not the greatest lover of soap operas but the LORIMAR made, David Jacobs created series DALLAS was one of those few exemptions that I enjoyed whenever I got the chance to see it, so the idea of the worlds favourite Texas based oil soap/drama family feuding without its top-star name: Larry Hagman, as the singular, fiercely determined, power mad, women loving J.R. Ewing, or worse: another actor playing the part instead of him, would be truly unthinkable, so its nice to know that the upcoming re-imagined TV series (yep, another one of those!), now aborted as a movie project (John Travolta as J.R.! Give me a break!), will have the actor and character back in a big way, alongside his previous series regulars: long suffering abused alcoholic, consigned to the loony bin wife, Sue Ellen (Linda Gray, who's looking great after a long absence from TV screens!) and, possibly, Patrick Duffy as J.R.s brotherly rival, Bobby (but, message to the producers, don't kill him again. We all remember how bad that turned out!).

Classic titles and music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJX8Cas9d7U

Shooting begins soon in California and Dallas, with the oldsters amidst a fresh new sexy cast that the producers hope will win the hearts and minds of old and new generations of viewers alike. Will they succeed? I think the die-hard fans certainly want it too, and it will certainly make money in overseas sales as a name brand. But have general audiences become more fickle in their drama tastes since the eighties? We'll certainly find out very soon...

Numerous early seasons of DALLAS are now available on DVD.