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TV Living in Dallas' Past


by Jerome Weeks 29 Mar 2011 10:35 AM

The pilot for the re-make of the ‘Dallas’ TV series will be shot here in April, but also in April comes the airing of the controversial mini-series ‘The Kennedys’ — focusing primarily, yes, on the president who was shot here.

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There is, of course, that TNT re-make of the ’80s primetime soap Dallasthe pilot for which is going to be shot in Dallas, starting next month and starring Larry Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy.

But April also sees the controversial 8-part mini-series The Kennedys, which the History Channel walked away from and which the minor cable outfit ReelzChannel picked up to start airing Sunday. The New York Times has run quite a few articles on the show because of the apparent consternation (and objections raised) by Kennedy loyalists to the screenplay’s accuracy and dramatic inventions. There’s also the fact that The Kennedys represented History’s first major, but now more or less failed foray into a scripted series, and all the speculation about the possible slant to the material provided by (conservative) producer Joel Surnow (24) and (liberal) screenwriter Stephen Kronish (The Commish). (For what it’s worth, the NYT interviewed presidential historian Richard Reeves, who’s seen the series and found it actually kind of bland — the only things that were new, he said, were the ones the filmmakers made up.)

But for Dallasites, the interest here, obviously, is in the ending of the series: the assassination. And judging from the show’s two trailers (one here, two here), we will see Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository (above), Jackie Kennedy standing by her murdered husband’s gurney at Parkland and the funeral procession in Washington.

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