About Dallas
Dallas is an American primetime soap opera that aired on CBS from 1978 to 1991, chronicling the wealthy and perpetually feuding Ewing family, owners of the Texas oil and cattle empire Ewing Oil and the sprawling Southfork Ranch. Created by David Jacobs, the series centers on the long-running rivalry between scheming oil baron J.R. Ewing and his honorable younger brother Bobby, whose conflicting ambitions and loyalties drive much of the drama. The show blended business intrigue, romance, betrayal, and family conflict into a glossy portrait of new-money excess that came to define the television soap genre.
The series is best remembered for the 1980 cliffhanger "Who Shot J.R.?", which left audiences guessing over the summer hiatus about the identity of the assailant who gunned down the show's central antihero. The resolution episode became one of the most-watched broadcasts in American television history and turned the question into a global pop-culture phenomenon. Larry Hagman's portrayal of the villainous yet charismatic J.R. Ewing became iconic, and the character is frequently cited as one of television's most memorable antagonists.
Across 14 seasons, Dallas wove together storylines involving corporate warfare over Ewing Oil, the troubled marriage of J.R. and his wife Sue Ellen, romances and rivalries with the neighboring Barnes and Farlow families, and a steady stream of affairs, schemes, and reversals of fortune. The show was famously willing to upend its own continuity, most notoriously when an entire season was retroactively explained as a dream so that the deceased Bobby Ewing could return to the series. Dallas became a worldwide ratings success, was syndicated internationally, and spawned the spin-off Knots Landing as well as later television movies and a 2012 continuation series.