DAVID Cameron will today ask President Obama if there is any chance he could bring back Dallas.
As he embarks on his first official trip to Washington, the prime minister said Britain and the US had to be ‘realistic’ about the special relationship and what it could achieve on behalf of television viewers in both countries.
As the two men meet in the Oval Office, a new series of Dallas, the possibility of a Friends movie and the American version of The Office will join Afghanistan, BP and the release of the Lockerbie bomber on the list of things that neither of them can do anything about.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mr Cameron insisted: “If there was to be a new series of Dallas Britain could exert a positive influence to ensure there were plenty of scenes involving JR and Cliff Barnes, rather than Sue Ellen’s drunken quivering or a repeat of the Patrick Duffy bathroom resurrection debacle.”
He added: “We need to stop obsessing about our relationship with America and accept that they now make better television programmes than us. They may not have a David Attenborough, but we do not have a Stargate Bananaverse, a Desperate Old Tarts or a Crime Scene: Navy Crime.”
A White House spokesman said that while a new Dallas was always on the table, President Obama wanted reassurances from Mr Cameron that he would act against any British television programme that causes massive environmental damage on US soil.
He added: “After Little Britain USA we did have the USS Nimitz parked off Anglesey for a couple of weeks. And all we can say about our version of Life in Mars in comparison to yours is that at least ours wasn’t over-rated.”
A British Embassy source in Washington said: “The Bush presidency gave Britain a golden opportunity to lobby for the return of Dallas, but all Tony Blair wanted to talk about was oil companies and Jesus, while Gordon Brown just sat there staring at the wall.”
