Television series

Knots Landing

Name: Knots Landing
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1979
Cast: Michele Lee, Ted Shackelford, Joan Van Ark, Kevin Dobson, Donna Mills

Drama

Knots Landing began as Dallas's quieter spinoff and ended up outliving it by six years, trading oil derricks for a suburban cul-de-sac where affairs, blackmail and buried pasts unfold behind sprinklered lawns. It's slower-burning and more character-driven than its glossier cousins — closer to a long, gossipy conversation about your neighbours than a tycoon saga. For soap devotees who like their scandal domestic-sized.

TVMaze rating

4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like soap operas that take their time, where the pleasure is watching neighbours' marriages, grudges and alliances shift over fourteen seasons of Seaview Circle, closer to Dallas's long memory than to a tidy weekly drama.

Skip it if you want self-contained episodes or quick payoffs, since the storylines simmer for many episodes and the dialogue and plotting show their late-seventies, pre-prestige-TV age.

What it asks of you: A commitment: 344 hour-long episodes across fourteen seasons, with a slow, talky rhythm and a steady supply of domestic betrayals you will need to follow week to week.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Dallas1978

The mothership. Watch where Gary and Valene came from, and see how J.R. Ewing turned prime-time soap into a genuine cultural event people organised their year around.

But Bigger, brasher and more cartoonish than Knots Landing's domestic scale — oil-baron excess a long way from Seaview Circle.

Dynasty1981

Same decade's appetite for scandal turned up to maximum wattage — shoulder pads, catfights, and Joan Collins doing more damage with an eyebrow than most villains manage with a gun.

But Camp and glamour over grounded character work; more interested in spectacle than emotional realism.

Falcon Crest1981

CBS's own answer to Dallas, swapping cul-de-sac intimacy for a vineyard dynasty at war with itself — same era, same network, same appetite for long-simmering family grudges.

But The wine-country setting and business intrigue can feel colder and more remote than Knots Landing's neighbourly warmth.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Knots Landing

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

All That Heaven Allows1955

Knots Landing runs on Sirk's engine — repressed desire, social judgment, gorgeous surfaces hiding rot behind the hedges — just stretched over fourteen years instead of two hours.

Douglas Sirk's Technicolor melodrama about a widow whose desire for a younger man scandalises her manicured suburb — the visual and moral template every domestic soap since has borrowed from, knowingly or not.

But Two hours, not sixty — a single contained story instead of years of accumulating scandal, and its 1950s moral universe feels a world away.

Desperate Housewives2004

Takes the cul-de-sac premise and adds a dead narrator, dark comedy, and murder mysteries — a direct spiritual descendant that knows exactly how ridiculous suburban secrets can get.

But Broader jokes and a puzzle-box mystery format replace the slower, soapier rhythms of the original.

Melrose Place1992

Same producers' DNA, different decade — younger, sexier, faster, with an apartment complex standing in for the cul-de-sac and Heather Locklear's Amanda as pure, gleeful venom.

But Trades slow-burn character development for quicker, trashier twists; less patience for domestic detail.

Big Little Lies2017

Suburban secrets and marriages under pressure, but shot like cinema and acted by an overqualified cast — proof the genre can be prestige as easily as pulp.

But Only seven episodes and a much darker, more violent throughline than the gentler melodrama of Seaview Circle.

This Is Us2016

A different kind of long-form family saga — less scandal, more tearjerker — but it shares Knots Landing's commitment to following ordinary people's lives across years and years.

But Leans hard into tears-on-demand sentimentality rather than soap-opera scheming; a very different emotional register.

Peyton Place1957

The show that basically invented American prime-time soap — small-town secrets and scandal behind white picket fences, years before Knots Landing perfected the formula.

But Black-and-white, slower pacing and dated production values will test viewers used to modern soap polish.

Brothers & Sisters2006

A big, warm ensemble family drama with plenty of relationship turmoil and long-simmering resentments — less scandalous than Knots Landing but similarly addicted to its characters' entangled lives.

But More earnest and less deliciously wicked; lacks Knots Landing's taste for genuine villainy.

Olive Kitteridge2014

Same raw material as Knots Landing — marriages fraying under years of small betrayals — but stripped of soap gloss and played for genuine ache instead of delicious melodrama.

A quiet, devastating four-part miniseries following one marriage and one small town across decades — all the accumulated grievance and tenderness of long-form soap, played entirely straight and beautifully acted.

But No scandal, no cliffhangers, no villains to root against — just patient, often painful realism that asks for stillness rather than gasps.

Jane the Virgin2014

Takes the exact soap machinery Knots Landing runs on — secret parentage, buried pasts, love triangles — and turns the volume up until it becomes comedy, showing you the gears of the genre you've been quietly loving.

A telenovela pastiche fully in on its own joke — love triangles, secret twins, presumed-dead villains — narrated with a wink that makes soap's wildest excesses feel like a delightful in-joke rather than a guilty pleasure.

But Comedic, fast-paced and self-aware in a way that's the opposite of Knots Landing's earnest, slow-burn sincerity — parody as much as homage.