Here's Pammie, but where's her face gone?

THE most alarming moment in this stroll down memory lane was the first glimpse of Victoria Principal, alias Pamela Ewing in the glossy US soap that ruled TV screens in the 1980s.

She looked different from how I remembered her. "I do miss the faces of the cast I love so much," she enthused. She seemed to be missing her old face too.

It came as no surprise to find that she's married to a plastic surgeon, information gleaned not from the programme but a TV listings magazine. An interview with Larry Hagman and Linda Gray in the same publication was also far more informative than anything in this programme.

This nostalgia series is at its best when digging out stuff about people who have faded from the public view rather than those, like most of the Dallas cast, who've remained in the spotlight.

Still, it was worth watching just to see Linda Gray put those Swellen lips into top gear to pout, bite and twirl them as she recalled her character's drunken days. Those lips deserve an Oscar of their own.

One problem for the After They Were Famous team was that the Dallas cast were one big, happy family. They had fun making the series, sensibly realising that it was impossible to take the story seriously. Out-takes, notably those showing pranks played by serial jokers Hagman and Patrick Duffy, demonstrated the hoot they had on set.

The Hagman dribble, in which he'd emit a drizzle of saliva from his mouth at deadly serious moments, was copied by others. Juvenile, maybe, but what you'd expect from an actor who arrived carrying saddlebags stuffed with bottles of champagne.

His drinking was legendary, downing four or five bottles of champagne a day, although he never got drunk or failed to be anything but professional on the set.

The price he eventually paid was almost dying before surgeons gave him a liver transplant. Today he works for Alcoholics Anonymous and organ donation organisations.

Tourists visiting Southfork ranch are surprised to find that the inside doesn't resemble what they saw on screen. That's because interiors were filmed on a Hollywood sound stage. Just as well because temperatures on location in Texas reached 126 degrees - which accounts for the picture of Linda Gray with a hairdryer stuffed down her blouse, trying to cool off.

The decline of Dallas was traced back to the return of Bobby Ewing. Killed in a car crash, he was discovered alive and well and wet in the shower a year later after actor Duffy was asked back to the series.

Even Principal, who played his wife, had no idea how he was being resurrected. She filmed a scene in which she opened a shower door. There was no one inside.

Duffy was filmed secretly in a shower for, the crew were told, a commercial. The two bits of film were put together and, lo and behold, Bobby lived.