Product Description
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Uncork the complete first season of Falcon Crest, the popular,
long-running series centered on the rich vineyards and richer
people of Northern California’s wine country. Academy Award®
winner Jane Wyman stars as winery matriarch Angela Channing, who
will let nothing – family, honor, the law – stand between her and
power. Co-stars include Robert Foxworth as Chase Gioberti,
Angela’s upstanding nephew and rival, and Lorenzo Lamas as Lance
Cumson, Angela’s scheming, playboy grandson. Meet the characters…
indulge in the lifestyle…savor the first of nine seasons of
vintage television melodrama.
.com
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Nineteen eighty-two was a very good year for prime-time soaps.
Dallas, in its fourth season, revealed who J.R., Dynasty
heated up in its second season with the addition of Joan Collins,
and Falcon Crest made its auspicious debut. Neither as wickedly
fun nor campily over the top as its predecessors in its inaugural
season, Falcon Crest added a touch of class to this genre of
infinite guilty pleasures. The venerable Jane Wyman, a casting
coup, stars as Angela Channing, the iron-willed matriarch who
will stop at nothing to maintain her power as head of Falcon
Crest Winery and the surrounding Tuscany Valley. Robert
Foxworthy, not the snappiest grape on the vine, costars as
Charles Gioberti, Angela's nephew, who inherits a share of the
winery in the wake of his her Jason's death. He moves west to
make a new life for his troubled family, including wife Maggie
(Susan Sullivan), a freelance writer; hotheaded son Cole (William
R. Moses), an aspiring archaeologist; and angsty teenaged
daughter Vickie (Jamie Rose), especially unhappy in her new
surroundings. "I can't breathe in that house," she complains to
Cole in the episode "Dark Journey," just before running away to
San Francisco, where she unwittingly becomes enthralled to a
pornographer. Falcon Crest was referred to as "Dallas with
grapes," but there is one key difference. Larry Hagman's J.R.
took great and gleeful pleasure in plotting his rivals'
downfalls. Angela is a tough old bird, but whether she's hiring
Charles's disreputable former war buddy to sabotage his crop or
undermining his campaign for the County Board, she seems to get
no particular kick out of her machinations to drive Charles and
family out of the valley. What she and Falcon Crest needed was a
more formidable and equally cunning nent. Enter David Selby
as Richard Channing in season 2. Until then, we have Lorenzo
Lamas as Angela's spoiled nephew and dangerously eager
coconspirator and plenty of dark secrets and uncovered family
skeletons to propel the season forward, principally Charles's
growing suspicions that Angela isn't telling the truth about his
her's death (well founded, as the audience knows from the
pilot episode). One Very Special Episode features Lana Turner in
her first screen role in more than a decade as Chase's mother.
Anyone hoping for a Dynasty-esque catfight between Turner and
Wyman will be disappointed, but the two screen legends are great
verbal sparring partners. A special shout-out, too, to Chao-Li
Chi as Chao-Li, Angela's very faithful butler and chauffeur, as
well as Ana Alicia as Melissa, who livens things up as a scheming
wine heiress who loves Cole but submits to an arranged marriage
with Lance. Though it serves up some cheese with its wine, Falcon
Crest has aged well, and its first season can be savored in
episode sips or in one intoxicating gulp. --Donald Liebenson