What is it? A reboot of/love letter to the 1980s US soap juggernaut.
Why you’ll love it: If you loved 1980s Dynasty with its heady mix of bastards, bitches, weaponised manicures and shoulder pads you could land a plane on, you’ll be into this new version like crude up a pipeline.
Original Dynasty creators Esther and Richard Alan Shapiro are exec producers, giving their young successors the seal of approval, and it shows. If it’s possible to bottle what was good and so moreish about the original and sprinkle said essence over the new incarnation, the makers of The OC and Gossip Girl have worked out how.
The existing dramatis personae, members of the rival Carrington and Colby families, have been reimagined as altogether more interesting characters. Sammy-Jo (Heather Locklear in the original) is now a leather-clad, vindictive gay man but with Locklear’s original twinkle in his eye. Boring old Blake and Krystle are remade as a badass businessman and his sexy young fiancée with a dark past. Blake’s daughter Fallon is our way into the story as we follow the ambitious young upstart back to the family pile to take her rightful place as CEO of Carrington Atlantic.
Her brother Steven (struggling with his sexuality in the original) is also a gay man but the tension with his father comes this time from his commitment to the liberal cause. He’s already stopped one of his father’s business schemes on ethical grounds by lying down in front of the bulldozers. Daddy wants to frack the world.
Moving the action from Denver to Atlanta, producers also mix up the cast nicely with a new injection of acting talent. The Colbys are African American while Cristal’s side (she gets a change of spelling) are Latin American
“Like it or not, we live in an age of dynasties,” says Fallon in voiceover as clips of the Trumps, Murdochs and Kardashians flash and flicker unnecessarily across the screen. New Dynasty delights in the timelessness of what once seemed a uniquely 80s set-up. “See?” they nudge, passing the popcorn. “Nothing’s changed.”
The first episode is an unashamed fun-ride, forcing exposition, character and a couple of belting set-pieces into just 45 minutes. It’s not spoiling things to say you get a cat-fight, an explosion, a wedding and a funeral all in the first 90 minutes. It’s trashy as hell, but every single piece of action comes from character. These people know what they’re doing.
“Please, call me Mom,” spits Cristal as she launches her shellac at a furious Fallon in a fight that pays homage to Alexis and Krystle’s frequent tussles of yore.As is right and proper, Fallon and Steven’s mother, Alexis, is only teased at in early episodes. In the original show she didn’t appear until the very end of season one when the canny Shapiros cast Joan Collins and made soap history.
The internet has many theories about who will play the new matriarch from hell, but I choose not to search because I’d like it to be a nice surprise, just like the first time around.
Where: Netflix
Length: Two 45-minute episodes already available with a new instalment every Thursday.
Stand-out episode: The series opener is impressively packed with action and character development for a supposedly tawdry soap.
If you liked Dynasty, watch: original Dynasty (DVD), Gossip Girl (Netflix).
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