Moving Wallpaper / Echo Beach
This was the first night of an interesting new double act on ITV1.
Moving Wallpaper was a comedy following the creative team, under the lead of producer Jonathan Pope (played by Ben Miller), developing a new soap called Echo Beach. Their fruits of their labour was showing directly after.
The show reminded me a bit of Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive, but whereas that interspersed the production and the product (as has been seen elsewhere), this seeks to create two separate programs which should both be able to stand on their own two feet.
I got a few laughs out of Moving Wallpaper. The headbutting of Michael Grade’s photo, the Simon Cowell references and using the Soap Awards categories as plot guides got a chuckle. Echo Beach - a sort of Hollyoaks by the beach - fared less well. I couldn’t give it any emotional investment because I was too busy looking for any gags which might link it back to Moving Wallpaper, such as Martine McCutheon’s dress. You could get away with it as an after lunch soap, but it’s not funny enough as a comedy or credible enough as a drama to warrant a 9.30pm scheduling.
Interesting experiment, but I hope it doesn’t go on too long.