Knots Landing
1 9 7 9 - 1 9 9 3 (USA)
320 x 60 minute episodes
A spin-off from Dallas, this series concerned oil
fortune heir Gary Ewing and his melodramatic Southern California
lifestyle.
Knots Landing was probably the nearest Americans could
bear to get to a soap opera about ordinary people. 'Ordinary'
meaning that nobody in the show has a private jet. Yet.
The principal married couples and their lovers lived on the
same cul-de-sac in the "quiet" community of Knots
Landing. The show was a suburban soap opera taken to the extreme
(sort of Neighbours-on steroids) with sordid love affairs,
nervous breakdowns, alcoholism and sexual transgressions to rival
all other prime time soaps.
Gary Ewing was an alcoholic no-good son of the millionaire
Southfork Ewings, who remarried his teenage waitress bride Valene
after Miss Ellie's intervention, and moved south to where Bobby
Ewing had constructed a bunch of houses on 20 acres of
family-owned land.
Gary and Val left their troublesome daughter Lucy at Southfork,
though she and her uncles dropped in from time to time.
The neighbours were Karen and Sid, who owned the local garage
where Gary worked, Richard and Laura, a crazy lawyer and his
battered wife who had to pick up men at a military base for
revenge, and a young recording executive and his wife who moved
away.
Later Abby Cunningham, Sid's divorced sister, a scheming blonde
man-eater, arrived to tantalize and terrify all the men. Like Dynasty,
Knots Landing improved with a large dash of female
nastiness.
Gloom descended with the death of Sid in hospital after a road
crash. Val's Bible-bashing mother, Lillimae, came on the scene,
and as Gary submitted to Abby's sexy ploys, Val became a
best-selling novelist, discovered Gary's betrayal and left him.
At this point, US audiences began to yawn and new characters
were added to beef up the show. In came a new Mr Nice for Karen in
Mack Mackenzie, in came a sexpot called Ciji, in came a new Mr
Nasty, corrupt politician Greg Sumner and in came two celebrities
- Ava Gardner as a mischievous widow wreathed in cigarette smoke,
and Michael York as a devious publisher.
After Karen's near terminal happiness with Mack, she suffered
every disaster in the soap book.
The triangular traumas of Gary, Val and Abby multiplied, there
were murders, trials, drug problems, custody battles, kidnappings
galore AND they doubled their spending on the dresses Donna Mills
wore.
Despite all this, the show never equalled the ratings of its
predecessor.
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