Dynasty and The Colbys running order

Mel O'Drama

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Is there no "new prime time TV" season in the UK?

Our "new prime time TV" season is generally around October, as in other countries. We had far fewer American series on TV then, and imported series probably had to fit around our homegrown scheduling. Dallas was the exception since it was hugely popular. I remember a new Dallas season often used to start October, generally a matter of weeks behind American episodes, with a summer break.

The last seasons of Dynasty were closer to the correct "seasonal" scheduling, with the summer cliffhanger. Maybe we were getting the hang of it by then.

I remember Knots having a proper summer break and returning in the autumn with the new season at least a couple of times. Seasons Six and Seven had October-ish premieres. But in general it was treated even less respectfully than Dynasty, with weekday afternoon scheduling and being removed willy nilly to fit in the tennis or snooker.
 

Carrie Fairchild

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And I had no idea that Seasons Three to Seven had run without breaks between seasons. That's blown my mind a little. The final episodes of The Colbys' First Season/Dynasty's Sixth Season have always been clear in my mind as season finales, so I imagine there was some promotion around the cliffhangers and the new seasons, even without the break (unlike some seasons of Knots).

I've had a look and there was actually a slight break between the season finales you mentioned above & the next season premieres (2 weeks for Dynasty & 4 weeks for The Colbys). What I'm most surprised by is that of all the big 80's soaps, Dynasty and The Colbys were the only two to see out their entire UK runs in primetime. I always presumed Dynasty would've been shoved off a less salubrious timeslot as things got more ridiculous but obviously ratings dictated otherwise.
 

Mel O'Drama

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I've had a look and there was actually a slight break between the season finales you mentioned above & the next season premieres (2 weeks for Dynasty & 4 weeks for The Colbys).

Thanks for looking. It's good there was at least some kind of delineation between seasons.
 

Carrie Fairchild

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Thanks for looking. It's good there was at least some kind of delineation between seasons.

There was also actually a couple of weeks between the end of season 3 and the start of season 4 but then seasons 4, 5 & 6 just ran one into the other without any breaks. Again, I'm guessing ratings were good and the BBC wanted to keep churning out more & more while the show was hot.
 

Mel O'Drama

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seasons 4, 5 & 6 just ran one into the other without any breaks. Again, I'm guessing ratings were good and the BBC wanted to keep churning out more & more while the show was hot.

You're probably right. If the Beeb wanted Dynasty on the air throughout the entire year, the arrival of The Colbys was perfect timing. Just when they'd practically caught up to current episodes, along comes the spin-off and they're able to stretch out Season Six for almost an entire year by alternating weeks.

It worked out great for me as well. As I said, I was properly discovering the series around this time. I do wonder if long-term viewers may have felt a little fatigued after a while. With prime-time soaps, the pattern of building to a cliffhanger and then having a decent break for it to resonate is an important part of the experience for me.
 

Carrie Fairchild

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You're probably right. If the Beeb wanted Dynasty on the air throughout the entire year, the arrival of The Colbys was perfect timing. Just when they'd practically caught up to current episodes, along comes the spin-off and they're able to stretch out Season Six for almost an entire year by alternating weeks.

It worked out great for me as well. As I said, I was properly discovering the series around this time. I do wonder if long-term viewers may have felt a little fatigued after a while. With prime-time soaps, the pattern of building to a cliffhanger and then having a decent break for it to resonate is an important part of the experience for me.

Was the spoiler element big with Dynasty or did you manage to avoid them? There's a clip of Emma Samms and Gordon Thomson on Wogan where she talks about the UFO cliffhanger before it had aired in the UK and Thomson jokes about her giving away the plot and she's like "they already know" (presumably from the papers).

Regarding the back to back airings, that is how Irish television screened Melrose Place, so I never really felt any great suspense around the cliffhangers because they were resolved the following week. I'm not even sure if I knew in those early Internet days what was a cliffhanger episode and what wasn't. Like I don't think the TV guide flagged them as "last in the series". However, I never got Melrose fatigue from the back to back airings. Even in it's latter years, it was always appointment viewing (or recording) for me.
 

Mel O'Drama

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Was the spoiler element big with Dynasty or did you manage to avoid them?

There were some storylines I knew about way in advance. In particular remember reading about the cliffhangers for Seasons Six and Seven in tabloids somewhere, complete with pictures. I'm thinking it was an imported magazine I'd got hold of, like the National Enquirer.

At the time they added to the anticipation, though such spoilers would bother me today. The fun was working out which ones were accurate and which were speculation. For instance, before the final episode I remember reading that the series was going to end with Blake going to the gas chamber, and that was mixed in with accurate information.


Regarding the back to back airings, that is how Irish television screened Melrose Place, so I never really felt any great suspense around the cliffhangers because they were resolved the following week. I'm not even sure if I knew in those early Internet days what was a cliffhanger episode and what wasn't. Like I don't think the TV guide flagged them as "last in the series". However, I never got Melrose fatigue from the back to back airings. Even in it's latter years, it was always appointment viewing (or recording) for me.

Yes, I suppose you don't miss what you've never had. I can remember watching Melrose on Sky One when it first aired, and that break between Seasons Three and Four was absolute torture. The season finale was promoted as such on the channel, and the new series was fairly heavily promoted, and I can remember some writeups announcing the new season in TV guides. It all added to the excitement. But there are other series I've discovered on DVD that still feel special, even without five or six months between seasons.
 

James from London

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What I'm most surprised by is that of all the big 80's soaps, Dynasty and The Colbys were the only two to see out their entire UK runs in primetime.
As I remember, it was having Dynasty, The Colbys and Dallas all airing in primetime slots in the UK even after the super-soap bubble had burst that pretty much put an end to BBC1 showing US imports except in late evening slots. There were complaints along the lines of "What are we paying our licence fees for if all we get is trashy American stuff?" So that's when new imported stuff started being shown on BBC2 and then later on cable instead. If something got really big, like The X-Files, it might move from BBC2 to BBC1, but only in a later, post-9 o'clock news slot.
 

Carrie Fairchild

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As I remember, it was having Dynasty, The Colbys and Dallas all airing in primetime slots in the UK even after the super-soap bubble had burst that pretty much put an end to BBC1 showing US imports except in late evening slots. There were complaints along the lines of "What are we paying our licence fees for if all we get is trashy American stuff?" So that's when new imported stuff started being shown on BBC2 and then later on cable instead. If something got really big, like The X-Files, it might move from BBC2 to BBC1, but only in a later, post-9 o'clock news slot.

I'm not surprised by the complaint aspect. The BBC is often put on a pedestal because of the license fee, so to see that they were airing stuff like the UFO cliffhanger in primetime, was quite surprising to me as I figured certain viewers would be up in arms about it.
 

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The BBC ran dynasty almost continuously from season 3 to season 7 because we were so far behind the US. Dynasty season 2 started in January 1983 in the U.K. when Dynasty was nearing the end of its third season in the US.

I remember The Colbys aired in Dallas’s Wednesday night slot during the debacle when ITV stole the Dallas rights which then went back to the BBC.

Only when Dallas returned did the BBC started alternating Dynasty with The Colbys because they didn’t want three US soaps in prime time during the week.

I imagine if Dynasty went into the 90s it would have lost its prime time slot in the same way as Dallas did during its final season.
 
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Mel O'Drama

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I remember The Colbys aired in Dallas’s Wednesday night slot during the debacle when ITV stole the Dallas rights which then went back to the BBC.

Only when Dallas returned did the BBC started alternating Dynasty with The Colbys because they didn’t want three US soaps in prime time during the week.

That makes sense. It also explains why my overwhelming memory of The Colbys is in that 8pm Wednesday Dallas slot. It was a bit of a contrast to turn over from Corrie to immediately be confronted with such opulence and grandiosity, and I can remember many a chortle within my family at the pomp of the opening titles compared with the downbeat Corrie.
 

Carrie Fairchild

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The BBC ran dynasty almost continuously from season 3 to season 7 because we were so far behind the US. Dynasty season 2 started in January 1983 in the U.K. when Dynasty was nearing the end of its third season in the US.

I remember The Colbys aired in Dallas’s Wednesday night slot during the debacle when ITV stole the Dallas rights which then went back to the BBC.

Only when Dallas returned did the BBC started alternating Dynasty with The Colbys because they didn’t want three US soaps in prime time during the week.

I imagine if Dynasty went into the 90s it would have lost its prime time slot in the same way as Dallas did during its final season.

That's interesting regarding The Colbys original timeslot. I didn't spot that when I was looking it up but I see now it premiered on a Friday before shifting to Dallas slot on Wednesdays for the month of February before returning to Fridays in March, on rotation with Dynasty. It explains the alternating timeslot situation, which I always thought to be an unusual programming choice (has any other series done this?) but as you've explained, it was more of a requirement by the BBC to avoid the primetime schedules being awash with American soaps. Had that ITV vs BBC debacle not occurred, I wonder where, if anywhere, The Colbys would've aired?
 

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That's interesting regarding The Colbys original timeslot. I didn't spot that when I was looking it up but I see now it premiered on a Friday before shifting to Dallas slot on Wednesdays for the month of February before returning to Fridays in March, on rotation with Dynasty. It explains the alternating timeslot situation, which I always thought to be an unusual programming choice (has any other series done this?) but as you've explained, it was more of a requirement by the BBC to avoid the primetime schedules being awash with American soaps. Had that ITV vs BBC debacle not occurred, I wonder where, if anywhere, The Colbys would've aired?

It was torture watching Dynasty alternate with The Colbys on a Friday night in 1986 as the Rita debacle stretched to 20 weeks! As the BBC doesn’t show adverts they should have just played The Colbys after Dynasty in a 90 minute slot but I guess they wanted to spread out the soaps.
 

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It was torture watching Dynasty alternate with The Colbys on a Friday night in 1986 as the Rita debacle stretched to 20 weeks! As the BBC doesn’t show adverts they should have just played The Colbys after Dynasty in a 90 minute slot but I guess they wanted to spread out the soaps.

Five months of Rita! Jesus wept!

I imagine it was quite hard for viewers to get into The Colbys too. I rewatched the start of season one recently and it is quite sluggish and takes a while for the momentum to kick in, so to have this sluggishness protracted over alternating weeks would have been a turn off for me.
 

colbyco

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At the time they added to the anticipation, though such spoilers would bother me today. The fun was working out which ones were accurate and which were speculation. For instance, before the final episode I remember reading that the series was going to end with Blake going to the gas chamber, and that was mixed in with accurate information.
In Germany I read the show will end with Krystle in a coma, Alexis trying to get Blake back - but he doesn´t want so she kills him with a knife ... later Alexis dies in a gas chamber ... a dutch tv team also talked with Paulsen about this and he answered "this is not the way Alexis dies ..."
 

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I don't think that order works. Episode 5 of The Colbys ends on a cliffhanger where an amnesiac Fallon accuses the visiting Adam of having raped her, so it makes no sense to then switch to a Dynasty episode where Adam is back in Denver, only to then go back to the cliffhanger from The Colbys.
 

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I don't think that order works. Episode 5 of The Colbys ends on a cliffhanger where an amnesiac Fallon accuses the visiting Adam of having raped her, so it makes no sense to then switch to a Dynasty episode where Adam is back in Denver, only to then go back to the cliffhanger from The Colbys.
But yet that was the way it aired in 1985. Even though you have a point here.
 

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I don't think that order works. Episode 5 of The Colbys ends on a cliffhanger where an amnesiac Fallon accuses the visiting Adam of having raped her, so it makes no sense to then switch to a Dynasty episode where Adam is back in Denver, only to then go back to the cliffhanger from The Colbys.
Yeah. That reminds me of Knots Landing season 4 episode 2, where in terms of transmission, JR is aware of some of the contents of his father’s will, just before he blackmails his way into finding out on Dallas.
 

Mustard

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Yeah. That reminds me of Knots Landing season 4 episode 2, where in terms of transmission, JR is aware of some of the contents of his father’s will, just before he blackmails his way into finding out on Dallas.
Wasn't Lucy engaged to Alan Beam on Dallas at the time that her Knots Landing episode transmitted? If so, why would she necessarily move to Los Angeles?
 

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Wasn't Lucy engaged to Alan Beam on Dallas at the time that her Knots Landing episode transmitted? If so, why would she necessarily move to Los Angeles?
Yes. Her visiting Gary and Valene gets mentioned on Dallas, in a scene with Muriel and Alan Beam.
 
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