Knots Landing
Prior to Dallas' premiere, series creator David Jacobs originated the idea for a drama series about four married couples in different stages of marriage, inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. However, CBS wanted a glitzy "saga-like" show, resulting in Jacobs creating Dallas. When the series proved to be a hit, CBS reconsidered Jacobs' original idea, which evolved into Dallas spin-off series Knots Landing, premiering during the mother series' third season, in late 1979.
Knots Landing followed the lives of Lucy's parents, Gary (Ted Shackelford) and Valene (Joan Van Ark), as they move to California to start a new life. During the first seasons, several Dallas actors (Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Charlene Tilton, Mary Crosby and Eric Farlow) made guest appearance in the new series, portraying their Dallas characters, and Shackelford and Van Ark continued to make occasional appearances in Dallas.
The ongoing bond between the two series was eventually cut in 1986, as the Dallas' tenth season premiere declared Bobby's death the previous year, a dream. Bobby's death had had major influence on the Knots Landing storylines as well (including the naming of Gary's newborn son "Bobby" in honor of his deceased uncle, and causing Gary's relapse into alcoholism). Unlike the Dallas producers, the Knots Landing writers were not ready to reset their series, resulting in the two series drifting apart, never to intervene with each other again.
Shackelford and Van Ark did however reprise their roles for the Dallas series finale, which showed what would have happened to their characters if J.R. had never existed.
Read more about this topic: Dallas (TV Series), Spinoffs, Sequels and Adaptions
Famous quotes containing the words knots and/or landing:
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)