The best thing about living in the UK during a writers’ strike? Access to lots of original programming. (National health care is a distant second.) Today, Fergus looks at ITV’s latest brainchild, the television twofer of Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper.
Britain’s ITV has a strange habit when it comes to drama. They’ll happily trundle on for years producing undemanding Sunday night ‘family’ viewing, then suddenly drop something rather original and special into the mix. They launched the two-hour drama show with Inspector Morse (then followed up with Prime Suspect) and went all sci-fi with Primeval. Now, they’ve delivered something very odd indeed…two shows for the price of one.
The idea behind Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach isn’t at all bad. The first tells the behind-the-scenes story of a popular ’soap’ drama, while the second shows the actual drama itself, a teen-filled Home & Away style show set in Cornwall. We’ve seen something along these lines in The Larry Sanders Show and Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive, where the off-camera material is woven into the supposed ‘real’ show and the madness of TV gets played to the fore.
So what’s the difference this time? Well, put simply, the show that’s meant to be getting mocked, Echo Beach, is better than the show doing the mocking. The supposedly satire-laden, madcap glimpse behind the scenes isn’t satirical, madcap or indeed funny. Ben Miller, as noxious TV producer Jonathan Pope, heads a cast of characters as thin as the walls on Prisoner Cell Block H in a series of heavy-handed, sub-The Office workplace scenes that actually make the fresh air, smart dialogue and sharp writing of Echo Beach something to look forward to. I’ve no doubt the idea was to create a ’so bad it’s good’ soap, but despite the deadening presence of ex-Eastender Martine McCutcheon in a key role, the (real-life) producers have roundly failed to fail.
My prediction? Echo Beach will live on long after this Moving Wallpaper’s been painted over.
Share This
January 16th, 2008 at 10:12 am
God, it sounds dire. There’s nothing worse than a show that’s trying to be witty that falls flat.
I’ve been getting weird feelings of deja vu hearing about Echo Beach, and I just realised it’s because of Echo Point, a mid-90s Australian soap that was universally reviled, according to one of the comments on its imdb page. Why the UK would try to do a beach-based soap I will never understand.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
After I finished this post, I remembered ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ which had a couple of similarities to ‘Moving Wallpaper’. It was a ‘behind the scenes in TV satire’ show and it wasn’t (in my opinion) funny.
Maybe it’s just that satire is incredibly hard to do?
January 17th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Ah, see I adored “Drop the Dead Donkey” and found it hilarious. Much as I did “Grosse Point” when that was on, which was another show within a show within a show type thing. I haven’t watched the ITV attempt though, it just doesn’t appeal.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am
It didn’t work for me. I met Andy Hamilton, one of the writers, a couple of times, and he’s a genuinely funny guy. Not sure what happened.
It doesn’t help that I have a strong dislike of Stephen Tomkinson.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Tom and I were talking just the other day about how ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ wasn’t funny. It’s weird, as it was the sort of thing that, on paper, ticked all my boxes; I should’ve liked it, but…nope.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
It does seem to be a love it or hate it thing, I can’t think of anyone who has said “oh, it was alright”. But yeah, having a dislike of an actor isn’t going to help.
I just remembered that ITVs last attempt at a soap was also a bit nuts - “Night & Day”.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Echo Beach is the best show ever!! its interesting and fun… and not only the plot is good…..the actors are pretty good themselves!!!!!!
( . . . especially ED SPELEERS!!! . . . )