IIRC they were oil moguls. What I found confusing was that guys that were complaining of their salary, like policemen, lived in 2000 sqft houses, like in the show with a kid named Urkell.

When was this apparently being aired, and in which country?

At least in Hungary a dubbed version of Dallas was being aired in the mid 1990s well after the Berlin Wall fell.

I even remember my brother jokingly asking a Hungarian at the time if she wanted to know who shot J.R. and she answered immediately with a very loud, "no!"

The East German communist regime lost to West German television. Comparing your 10 year wait period for a Trabi with the latest BMW made by the same ethnic and cultural group just a few miles across a fence living in a prosperous capitalist system was all the daily reminder East Germans needed. I remember how in a village in the North in 1982 they erected a giant TV antenna pole for better reception...