Comment by shevy-java
12 hours ago
Skimpy clothes can be stylish too. I don't really know of a modern TV series that goes that route anymore. So many things died - look at Married with children, the first five seasons. Such jokes are simply no longer made. It's strange how the world changed.
On youtube I recently had tons of auto-censoring where f*ck was removed in the audio with a bleep silent sound, but in the subtitles or in-titles, it was spelled out just fine. I hate censorship.
As for sexism, well - a male audience is more interested in certain elements. How high was the female audience percentage? Most probably were bored by the repetitive nature of that series. Always UFO and aliens. Dallas on the other hand, as TV show, had more elements, so a wider range of people were interested in it.
There's an entire industry of women's fiction made entirely of improbably bulging and muscular men (as seen on the cover, sometimes headless) with limitless drive and passion (as described, in physiological detail, in the text.)
Being dutifully concerned about miniskirts in a 60s TV show seems a little quaint in 2026.
That aside - UFO was originally sold as a show for kids, in the tradition of its predecessors, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, which were hugely popular.
The weirdness wasn't the sexy dresses - which were designed by the wife half of the co-production team - it's that it was clearly an adult show about adult themes with some toy franchise branding mixed in.
Some of the themes are still progressive today, like the episode about unconscious racism.
It was of its time, but so are most things, including the things being created and talked about today.
Dallas was a ridiculous soap opera with hammy over-the-top acting.
And I lived in Dallas so I never missed an episode.