Review of Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper Boxset

Introduction

I was hoping to have this review completed for the street date of this title, but as you will appreciate, twenty-four half-hours worth of programming is quite a body of work to view and analyze. I`ll have to admit up front that I haven`t been watching either show on its initial transmission, so I`ve come to these shows pretty much cold and it`s taken a while to catch up.

Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper could easily be described as a groundbreaking experiment in television, but that might be giving the project a little more credit than it deserves. Echo Beach is a soap opera set in Cornwall and following the Australian style of daytime soap popularised by Neighbours and Home and Away. Moving Wallpaper is a cod behind-the-scenes comedy about the making of the soap opera. The two shows have been transmitted back-to-back on ITV1.

The two shows have only just completed their twelve week run, and ITV chiefs have confirmed that while Moving Wallpaper has had a second series commissioned, the jury is still out on Echo Beach. The relationship between the two shows is a little reminiscent of the which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg question. Echo Beach could exist simply as a soap without Moving Wallpaper, and Moving Wallpaper could simply refer to a soap called Echo Beach without us ever needing to see the show. Do the shows complement each other? (Personally I`d love to see two shows mirroring each other - coming at the same story from completely different angles - and remember, if you see something like that in the near future you read it here first. - What? Simon Cowell has made a fortune from staking a claim on a concept much simpler, hasn`t he?)

It is entirely possible that Moving Wallpaper is a little too much like navel-peering on the part of the television industry. It might be fun for industry professionals and media nerds like yours truly, but I know a number of commentators have made uncomfortable noises about such a show going over the heads of some viewers. A spoof it may be, but I`d welcome anything that shows the real world what a screwed-up bed of conceptual inbreeding the television world is.

Moving Wallpaper attempts to lampoon television drama production in the same way that Drop The Dead Donkey went after television news services. Personally, I was sold on MW the moment the outgoing producer on the show headbutted the photo of Michael Grade on the wall.

Moving Wallpaper stars Primeval`s Ben Miller as Jonathan Pope, the replacement producer of Polnarren, an Emmerdale-ish soap opera which everybody at ITV reckons will bomb spectacularly. Like the total git he plays on Primeval, Miller`s Pope is a dim, self-centred, sarcastic, complete bastard.

Dropped squarely in it by his ITV bosses, Pope finds himself at the helm of a disaster-in-progress he will get the blame for. Not being the type to go down with any ship, let alone his own, Pope sets about sexing up Polnarren - retitled Echo Beach and now full of beautiful people rather than ugly lobster fishermen, much to the dismay of his writing team.

The first episode of MW ends and segues straight into Echo Beach, which turns out just as completely turgid as the production team was making out. Echo Beach is a psychotic take on an Aussie-style soap, right down to having Jason Donovan in the lead, only set in picturesque Cornwall surfing territory. Martine McCutcheon is his ex-girlfriend married to his worst enemy (Hugo Speer). Hugo Speer`s character is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, two-timing his wife while threatening to kill her and anybody she might have an affair with. Both families are completed by teenage kids who are about as stupid as one can be and still be capable of perambulation. The older generations are in the minority, represented by ex-Corrie stalwart Johnny Briggs, sporting a Cornish accent.

Each episode of Echo Beach is followed by a "mole cam" sequence - presumably filmed by a production company mole - these are reminiscent of Big Brother video-bites. Once you`ve seen Jason Donovan dancing around in one of Martine McCutcheon`s frocks, you won`t be able to think of him on Neighbours again and keep a straight face.

One particular highlight has to be Pope`s thirty-second summation of a Casualty storyline when one of the writers threatens to move to that show if he doesn`t get paid the same as the other writers. The payoff at the end of the episode is worth the price of admission alone.

Both shows were created by EastEnders series consultant Tony Jordan, who was also responsible for creating Hustle, Holby Blue, and co-creating Life On Mars.

Over the following eleven episodes, the characters slosh from crisis to disaster to crisis as soap characters are wont, and the production team faces similar trials and tribulations behind the camera.

Of the two shows, Moving Wallpaper is easily the stronger, with frequent pithy barbs aimed (hopefully good-naturedly) at the real ITV network bosses including outgoing director of television at ITV, Simon Shaps.

Both shows end on a cliffhanger, with the production team waiting to hear if the show has been renewed for a second season, and most of the characters on Echo Beach either in tears or deep trouble.

Here`s hoping both shows will be renewed for later in the year.

Video

As with so much modern television, both shows have been produced on digital video that has been filmised. Filmising, to oversimplify the process, involves hiking the contrast of the picture and doubling video half-fields to produce a film-like effect. Both Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach are presented in their proper 16:9 aspect ratio. The image is sharp (better than some shows being produced in HD and downconverted) and free of artefacts.

Audio

Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround.

Features

The "mole cams", interviews and deleted scenes. Unfortunately there are no subtitles.

Conclusion

A fascinating concept for a series - two faces of the same coin - the behind the scenes machinations of the television industry and the front-of-camera histrionics of a soap opera. Unfortunately, the whole is out of balance with one half played for laughs and the other not so. Personally, I`d skip Echo Beach and stick with Moving Wallpaper for a much more satisfying experience.