Despite its reputation as merely being "Dallas with grapes", Falcon Crest soon found its niche among the primetime dramas, occupying the middle ground between the two genre extremes — being more glamorous than Dallas, yet not quite as outrageous as Dynasty. The distinctive location filming in the Napa Valley and the dry, wryly humorous tone of the scripts gave the series a personality of its own.

The rivalry between Angela, Chase, and Richard stayed at the core of the show for several years, as more romantic entanglements spun around them. Lance and Cole found themselves not only caught up in their family battles for control of Falcon Crest, but were also competing for Melissa's affections.

Like its counterparts, Falcon Crest employed memorable end-of-season cliffhangers to boost ratings. The 1982–83 season ended with the resolution of a murder mystery "whodunit" plot (surrounding the death of Melissa's father, Carlo Agretti) that had spanned most of the season. The killer was revealed in front of the entire cast, only to produce a handgun. Shots were fired as the camera panned away from the mansion, fading into the final scene of a rose-draped coffin being lowered into the ground, leaving the audience to wonder who had been killed.

The third-season cliffhanger in 1984 involved a plane crash carrying most of the major characters, resulting in three of their deaths. A bomb explosion which ended the fourth season left Richard and Maggie in peril, and an earthquake that rippled through the valley ended the fifth season. The cliffhanger of the sixth season put Chase, Melissa, Richard, newcomer Dan Fixx and Maggie's baby in danger of drowning in the San Francisco Bay area. At the end of the seventh season, Melissa had finally wrested complete control of Falcon Crest away from Angela, while Richard was apparently murdered by "The Thirteen", a powerful group of shady businessmen whom he had turned against.

Falcon Crest was a top ten series from 1982 to 1985 (peaking at No. 7 in the 1983–84 season), airing after Dallas on Friday nights at 10:00 p.m. The series also frequently cast former Hollywood royalty in guest roles: Lana Turner, Gina Lollobrigida, Mel Ferrer, Cesar Romero, Robert Stack, Cliff Robertson, Celeste Holm, Lauren Hutton, Ursula Andress and Kim Novak all appeared on Falcon Crest. This aspect to the series seemed to be well-embraced by the producers, who at one stage instituted a rotating guest-star policy. Leslie Caron, Lauren Hutton, Eddie Albert, Eve Arden, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Ursula Andress all made appearances during the 1987–1988 season, as did Rod Taylor, who would remain with the series until its cancellation in 1990. After producer Jeff Freilich left the series at the end of the 1988 season, fewer special guest stars appeared to boost ratings, one of them being Susan Blakely in the final year.