Thirty years after it first appeared on our screens, Dallas is back – and the only amazing thing is that it took so long.

It started on Monday on TV3 amidst great excitement. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of TV soaps on our screens but for nostalgic reasons, Dallas seems to have gripped the nation – that’s if you believe the hype.

And of course the hype ensured that most of us of a certain age didn’t miss it. After all, what would we talk about around the water cooler the following day? And sure enough people were talking about it, some of them not the usual suspects, ones who would never be seen dead watching something like Dallas.

But yes, for nostalgic reasons we allowed ourselves to watch it . . . and talk about it the following day at work.

So what was there to talk about? Southfork Ranch certainly looked smaller than we remembered it but then in the late Seventies the mansions of the Celtic Tiger hadn’t been built yet. Most of us were living in shacks by comparison. Sure we didn’t know any better. We were all in the same boat.

Bobby Ewing appears to have a new wife but everyone was pretending not to notice that it wasn’t Pam. What did happen to Victoria Principal? Did she marry a plastic surgeon, leave acting and was never heard of again.

Anyway, Sue Ellen was there and so were the adverts for Newbridge in which she stars as an ambassador or something.

She’s all cleaned up in this series. In other words she is not fluthered half the time which means she is not quivering her lips all the time.
And JR. I was shocked to see he was now in a nursing home but what a place. It looked like a five star hotel. But typically he has reared a brat, John Ross, who never visits. . . only he did in the first episode to pick his father’s brain so he could drill for oil on the ranch, something Bobby doesn’t want to happen.

So now we have the next generation, John Ross (yes another JR) and Bobby’s son, Chris (the gardener from Desperate Housewives who went out with Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud for a while) are at each other’s throats.

The young women all look alike to me but yes they too are rivals and already JR is doublecrossing his son, his son is doublecrossing him and they are both doublecrossing Bobby. Keep up, you need to study hard to follow this series.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.