Reliving the Golden Age of Primetime Soaps: Falcon Crest Streaming on Amazon

Did you miss the 1980s? Have you only heard about the golden age of primetime soaps? Do you know who shot JR? Are you familiar with The Abby Scale (Abby being a 10)? What was the Moldovan wedding massacre? If not, it’s time to find out. And if you do understand all the above references, well, it’s time to relive the big hair, the big shoulder pads, and the big personalities of primetime soaps’ greatest decade. We start with the show that never got the acclaim and buzz of its sister soaps, but it was worth watching then, and it is definitely worth watching now that all seasons are available on Amazon Prime — Falcon Crest!

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History Lesson

Falcon Crest ran on CBS from 1981 to 1990, and it stood out from the start in numerous ways. To begin with, the undisputed star and central character was a woman, Angela Channing, as played by Academy Award winner Jane Wyman. (At the time, Wyman’s ex-husband was even more famous than her. He was literally the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Rumor has it that cast and crew were forbidden from uttering the sitting president’s name on set. Which sounds awkward, to say the least.)

Winners Circle

The rest of the cast was made up of Robert Foxworth (who, another fun fact, was the actor Dallas wanted to replace Larry Hagman if contract negotiations went south), Susan Sullivan (who’d starred in everything from daytime soap Another World to primetime sitcom Dharma & Greg), David Selby (a one-time Dark Shadows werewolf), Lorenzo Lamas (pre-Renegade), William R. Moses (most recently seen as Elizabeth’s deadbeat dad on General Hospital), and Hollywood golden age guest stars like Lana Turner, Cesar Romero, Cliff Robertson, Mel Ferrer, Kim Novak, and Eddie Albert (whose son, Edward Albert, played a different character on a different season with no relation to him; guess he got the word that the Falcon Crest bunch were a hoot!).

Set and Spin

But what really made FC special was its setting and its industry. Dallas and Dynasty were about oil. Oil isn’t that visually interesting. Knots Landing took place in a sleepy Southern California suburb. Sleepy southern California suburbs aren’t that visually interesting, either.

Falcon Crest took place in the Tuscany Valley (a fictional version of real-life Northern California Napa Valley), just across the bridge from San Francisco. Wine-growing valleys and San Francisco are very interesting visually, and FC took full advantage by filming a chunk of each season on location. They also made wine, which is much more accessible and interesting than oil. If you missed FC the first time around because you weren’t born yet, you have no excuse for missing it now that it’s streaming on Amazon Prime.