Echo Beach. Filmed in and around Watergate Bay, Cornwall. An apt name, given the scandal being broadcast by ITV...
1. Martine McCutcheon is having a less-than-perfect moment, with the former EastEnders vixen reduced to a frump who'll cry at the slightest mention of former lover Dan, and is one cornish pasty away from beaching herself on the sand...
2. Jason Donovan is grappling heroically -- with his accent. It's a losing battle, mate. Despite having spent the best part of his post-Neighbours life over here, he's still putting on that affected cut-glass English voice all foreigners do. Why, oh why, couldn't they let him just keep his Aussie accent and invent a back-story that fits? Maybe we can ask executive producer Jonathan Pope over on Moving Wallpaper, hmm? During a web-chat, or something. Oh yeah, he's not real...
3. Mrs McCluskey from Grange Hill has mysteriously turned up, too -- now in retirement from the innercity London school. Watch how she valiantly remembers (just about) to not look at the camera when turning her head. What an old-school pro.
4. Mike Baldwin is still suffering from Alzheimer's and is now shuffling around a caravan park thinking he's Cornish. Mike's funeral on Coronation Street must have been an elaborate hoax, that's the only way this make sense. It's definitely ol' Mike, y'see -- he does the same downward stare when he's thinking about something. Or upset. Or about to deliver a line.
5. Bobbi Lewis has also washed-up. Yes, soap fans, you remember Bobbi: the sexy knicker factory worker on Corrie, played by Naomi Ryan about 6 years ago? But she hasn't even recognised her old employer Mr Baldwin...
6. And the bloke from The Full Monty is refusing to get his kit off, and God knows this show needs something to spice it up.
The main question running through my mind now is: why is this on at 9.30 pm? For all its faults, it's perfect bad daytime television -- firmly at a Doctors level of quality. Well, just about. A 6 o'clock showing is as late as I'd schedule it -- but 9.30?! Primetime?
Maybe Echo Beach is supposed to cheer us all up now we're back from Christmas holidays and facing 3 more months of winter? It's the drama equivalent of those Thomas Cook adverts. Only it makes me want to emigrate, just to escape it.
But what of behind-the-scenes comedy sister show Moving Wallpaper, which precedes each episode? You know, the "mockumentary" that's instead filmed like a sitcom. Has nobody involved seen The Office?
It's not rocket science to realize you need to make viewers believe in the reality of your situation -- is it? So, y'know, don't cast people we recognise would be a good starting point. But no, we have the bloke from Primeval (Ben Miller, undoing the good work of his BBC sketch show in one swoop), that grey-haired bloke who turns up everywhere (usually sketch shows), and the sardonic Traveloge porter from I'm Alan Partridge.
Moving Wallpaper is constantly played too broad and the jokes are signposted, or unfunny... but, at least it as a bit of spirit and movement to it -- unlike the Echo Beach main event. It's probably the best ITV sitcom in years already, which isn't really saying much.
I read a defense yesterday that Echo Beach is supposed to be crap, so it's actually doing its job perfectly. I don't buy it. If it was meant to be a funny pastiche of bad soaps, it would be funnier, and wouldn't need a mockumentary appetizer. I'm not saying it has to be blunt and bang us over the head with obvious pastiche, but if its meant to be intentionally bad, it's not even doing that right! It's just... bland. Ask him. Or him. Or her. But not him -- 'cos he sort of liked it.
Soaps are notoriously difficult things to "get going", but even 90s uberflop Eldorada had more plots and characters underway in its first 2 episodes. Why has Echo Beach distilling everything down to a simple family-vs-family/sinister past plot? It's all too narrow. And then they dragged up the old arranged marriage chestnut for the one ethnic character! Do me a favour....
Anyway, I don't even think of Echo Beach as a soap now. The Home & Away beach vibe tricked us. It's just a 12-part drama. On ITV. The home of bad drama for a good 10 years now, and likely to retain its crown in 2008, despite Michael Grade's drama New Year revamp.
