Updated ’80s soap fi xates on wealth, provides distraction

Twenty-eight years after the original series ended, the CW has resurrected “Dynasty” as a brand-new series.

Of course, the series just isn’t the same. Where are the nuanced performances? The complex intellectual content? The exceptionally literate scripts?

If you’re remembering any such details, you never saw the original “Dynasty,” one of the flashy nighttime soaps of the 1980s; it premiered in 1981.

The new “Dynasty,” premiering tonight, is set in modern times.

Blake Carrington hasn’t aged a day since John Forsythe played him. In fact, he has gotten younger, as portrayed by Grant Show. His gay son, Steven (James Mackay), and conniving, spoiled daughter, Fallon (Elizabeth Gillies), haven’t aged, either. Alexis isn’t around, nor is Krystle Carrington.

The new show does have a Cristal, though, played by Nathalie Kelley, and she is engaged to Blake, much to Fallon’s displeasure.

The original series was famous for its physical battles between Alexis, played by Joan Collins, and Krystle, played by Linda Evans. The new show wastes little time setting up a similar relationship of mutual contempt between Cristal and Fallon. Yes, there is a physical brawl between them. (Keep an eye out for one especially funny and over-the-top moment involving Fallon and a wedding cake.)

The developers of the new show — Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and Sallie Patrick — update some of the trappings of life among the super-rich Carrington clan, with references to the 45th U.S. president, for whom Blake voted, as well as the use of smartphones, a subplot involving fracking and something of an attempt to add ethnic diversity to the cast.

Shows such as “Dynasty,” the original “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest” represented the acquisitiveness of the post-”Me Decade” — when for eight years in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was in the White House or spending time on his ranch in Santa Barbara, California; a company named Enron was created; Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married in a ceremony seen around the world; Microsoft Windows was released; Robin Leach shared “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”; and the Cold War thawed.

Fast-forward to 2017 and, well, times have definitely changed.

What doesn’t go out of style, though, is a fascination with wealth and scandal as an easy distraction.

The difference between then and now is that it feels, at least, as if our need for distraction is greater these days than it was in the 1980s.