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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 349365" data-attributes="member: 22">That&#039;s not me, I&#039;m afraid! I&#039;m pretty much inept when it comes to anything practical. Put me anywhere near a lighting rig and the entire theatre is likely going up in flames.As for New DALLAS&#039;s take on Cliff, we could argue from now until Christmas (i.e., tomorrow) about how great or terrible it was&nbsp; (I personally loved it), but my gosh, what a gift for an actor at an age where the kind of role he&#039;s far more likely to have been offered is someone&#039;s twinkly grandfather in a Lifetime movie. For all Kercheval&#039;s inventiveness, he&#039;d pretty much exhausted the emotionally erratic, flappy-handed version of Cliff we got in old DALLAS -- and that&#039;s not so much a criticism as an inevitability: as with Hagman&#039;s JR, the more familiar a character becomes to an audience, the harder it becomes for them to keep surprising and therefore intriguing that audience.&nbsp; New DALLAS allows Kercheval to take his performance in an entirely different direction. I think the closest we get to the showboating, heart-on-the-sleeve Cliff of old is his drunken outburst at JR&#039;s memorial service. The rest of the time, Kercheval underplays, holding his cards in check. No longer a ball of emotion, he plays Cliff as a hollowed-out husk of a man who&#039;s long since sold his soul in an offscreen Faustian pact. He&#039;s haunted. By what exactly, we can&#039;t be certain, but that&#039;s what so great -- he&#039;s mysterious again. Like the New DALLAS version of JR, the once (overly) familiar has become unfamiliar. We don&#039;t know what Cliff&#039;s capable of anymore and neither, perhaps, does he -- until the moment he, and we, find out. That end of episode close-up of Cliff&#039;s twitching face just after he calmly gives the order to blow up the rig with his pregnant daughter onboard is just ... well, Shakespearean is the word that comes to mind. Obviously I never knew Ken Kercheval and I hate the idea of claiming to speak for him, but my guess, from the type of actor he always seemed to be (bold, risk-taking, apparently unconcerned with appearing sympathetic), is that he would have relished the opportunity to play such a moment.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James from London, post: 349365, member: 22"] That's not me, I'm afraid! I'm pretty much inept when it comes to anything practical. Put me anywhere near a lighting rig and the entire theatre is likely going up in flames. As for New DALLAS's take on Cliff, we could argue from now until Christmas (i.e., tomorrow) about how great or terrible it was (I personally loved it), but my gosh, what a gift for an actor at an age where the kind of role he's far more likely to have been offered is someone's twinkly grandfather in a Lifetime movie. For all Kercheval's inventiveness, he'd pretty much exhausted the emotionally erratic, flappy-handed version of Cliff we got in old DALLAS -- and that's not so much a criticism as an inevitability: as with Hagman's JR, the more familiar a character becomes to an audience, the harder it becomes for them to keep surprising and therefore intriguing that audience. New DALLAS allows Kercheval to take his performance in an entirely different direction. I think the closest we get to the showboating, heart-on-the-sleeve Cliff of old is his drunken outburst at JR's memorial service. The rest of the time, Kercheval underplays, holding his cards in check. No longer a ball of emotion, he plays Cliff as a hollowed-out husk of a man who's long since sold his soul in an offscreen Faustian pact. He's [I]haunted[/I]. By what exactly, we can't be certain, but that's what so great -- he's mysterious again. Like the New DALLAS version of JR, the once (overly) familiar has become unfamiliar. We don't know what Cliff's capable of anymore and neither, perhaps, does he -- until the moment he, and we, find out. That end of episode close-up of Cliff's twitching face just after he calmly gives the order to blow up the rig with his pregnant daughter onboard is just ... well, Shakespearean is the word that comes to mind. Obviously I never knew Ken Kercheval and I hate the idea of claiming to speak for him, but my [I]guess,[/I] from the type of actor he always [I]seemed[/I] to be (bold, risk-taking, apparently unconcerned with appearing sympathetic), is that he would have relished the opportunity to play such a moment. [/QUOTE]

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What month follows July?