Review of Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure

Despite the objection of Dynasty's three main stars this TV movie was actually quite fun. OK so it had it's inaccuracies all but it was all for laughs! The center of the plot is ABC's desire to beat Dallas. Aaron Spelling played by Nicholas Hammond asks to Esther and Richard Shapiro to come up with a drama and presto they bring us Dynasty. Here we relive the era of excess and shoulder pads of the 80's (ah the 80's) as we chortle at the behind the scenes shenanigans. Pamela Reed steals Alige Krige's thunder as the ever optimistic Esther Shapiro. How she ever pulled it off without cracking up I will never know. Ritchie Singer was the perfect foil for Reed as the harassed husband and show writer Richard Shapiro. Krige's Joan Collins/Alexis is sexy and she really nailed her accent and mannerisms. Bartholomew John also did well as John Forsythe/Blake. My favorite line from him was "not the hair!" in fact he had a lot of great lines. Melora Hardin looked overly perky as Linda Evans/Krystle but managed to show vulnerability when confronted by the sight of a tabloid magazine as "the World's Loneliest Woman." The biggest scene stealer's however were "the TV audience," from the regular working class family in the US to the sushi eating Japanese executive and of course the drag queens. The provide buffer for comic relief as time went on. It wasn't all laughs though especially when Esther receives news about the late Rock Hudson's illness and the call of the show's cancellation came through were probably the best and dramatic moments. So was this TV movie really bad? Maybe a little. Hammy? Not really since Dynasty itself was a guilty pleasure even more so then this TV movie.