A second series?

This sounds promising, Martine McCutcheon is "thrilled" with Echo Beach:

Martine McCutcheon has declared that she is delighted with the reception of her new TV show, Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach.

Speaking at the South Bank Show Awards, she said: "I'm really thrilled and I know that ITV are really happy with it.

"Apparently they're really happy with the audience that they've reached which is a younger audience. I think they're just waiting for it to go from strength to strength hopefully."

In the soap Echo Beach, Martine plays housewife Susan Penwarden and the actress revealed she can't wait to go back to film more.

"We just all want to film together again because we absolutely genuinely got on like a house on fire in Cornwall," she said."

Does this mean a probable second series?

Echo Beach 104 review

Did anyone else sit through this episode with an increasing sense of terror about the prospect of Jason Donovan's pallid buttocks shining in the Polnarren moonlight?

Thanks to god and/or the scriptwriters, they stayed covered up. Anyone who ever did science GCSE and remembers the bitter disappointment when their friend manages a rainbow mushroom cloud, but their acids and things don't react properly and just sit limply in a test tube, will relate to the chemistry demonstrated here:




When it comes to contemporary drama, sitcoms and YouTube, the question often arises: "is this supposed to be funny?" This is an absolutely pointless question. Either something is funny or it isn't, it doesn't matter whether it was supposed to be. And this was an episode filled with rivers of tears and torrents of laughter. Tears of teen angst flood from the eyesockets of wannabe-Lolita Grace as she fails to seduce the male Hollyoaks caravan-dweller in a turquoise bra and transparent gold top. Laughter roars forth from us at her plight.

Grace: a clue. There's almost certainly a reason he looks like a gay Damon Albarn. We know he's not Damon Albarn, so add up your two plus two and make the thirteen-and-and-half that everyone else's SoapPlot caculator has managed to compute.

Because there don't currently appear to be any gay characters in Polnarren. We know Jason Donovan isn't gay. We definitely know that Jason Donovan isn't gay. Jason Donovan's son looks gay, but appears to be lusting after the female caravan-dweller. The dark-haired geek friend of Susan's son may as well be gay, but isn't (yet). Susie Amy looks the likeliest bet, in a Single White Female psycho-killer sort of a way.




Yay! Now that's a mushroom cloud.

Critics' reviews - 27th Jan 2008

AA Gill, The Times:

And Echo Beach is just about Corn-wall and kids – who gives a toss about them? It’s like a cross between Hollyoaks and Eldorado, on the set from Crossroads. My guess is that everyone will get fed up with the joke and bin it, or maybe they’ll bin Echo Beach and keep Moving Wallpaper as a sitcom about a soap that doesn’t exist.

Echo Beach 103 review

What is Susan Penwarden/Tiffany-from-Eastenders/Martine McCutcheon doing at the end of episode three? Is she uncovering a grave or digging for buried treasure? Or is she trying to face Mecca? Someone suggested her and Jason's dead baby is buried there, which would be gruesome but rather disappointing. After all, Jason is blond and Susan's son is blond and two plus two always makes about seventeen in soap terms.

Either way this was a woefully dull episode. There were far too many drawn out teen dating shenanigans. That's what drove Neighbours and Home & Away downhill, when the animals took over the farm and kitchen sink melodrama was cast aside in favour of teen-soap. We need adult action featuring Mike Baldwin and Mrs McCluskey. Only not actual adult action, if you get my drift. Hugo Speers and half (or all) of the Hollyoaks couple might be a likelier start for that.

Many critics have commented on Jason Donovan's woeful British accent ("the bizarre clipped upper-class tones of a Second World War pilot"). Here's a clip:




Competing for most excruciating moment this week are two choice performances. The first is Helen Lederer's daughter's laugh:


Truly this is gruesome. It's obviously supposed to be gruesome, but it's gruesome gruesome. It also doesn't help that her accent is even more painful than Gwyneth Paltrow's in Sliding Doors. And just how did Jason Donovan make enough cash to send her to Roedean? Maybe his conveniently dead wife was a Duchess.


Susie Amy's attempt at being Miss Marple is the second contender. Susie Amy already has a terrifying, stalker-like character with apparent designs on Susan Penwarden. She's also writing what sounds like the worst romance since Dame Sally Markham transcribed the Bible.



Since the very first hammy caveman invented the concept of drama, has a line ever been delivered in such a sinister tone? It makes Hannibal Lecter sound like the Care Bears.

Critics' reviews - 17th Jan 2008

Paul English, Daily Record:

There's a teenage soundtrack and beach action one minute, then scenes with OAPs saying "arrr" in the pub. And while the kids are frisky and sun-kissed, the adults are stiff and regionalised.
That said, it was great to see Grange Hill head Mrs McCluskey again. I'd wondered what she was up to ... making mutineers walk the plank, from the sound of things. All she was missing was the wooden leg and parrot.

Critics' reviews - 15th Jan 2008

Shellyvision, The Mirror:

Some of the groovy young surf kids (like Ed Speleers as Jimmy) make the biggest bimbos in Hollyoaks look like Meryl Streep.

The soundtrack has more rubbish Britpop than Jamie Oliver's CD collection and there is zero chemistry between Donovan and McCutcheon, who - as Nancy Weeks says in Moving Wallpaper - look like the result of "the cynical casting stunt it is".

McCutcheon trundles around as if she's on castors, smiling benignly like the new Noel Gordon. As for Donovan, whether he is meant to be so godawful is anyone's guess.

His accent - or accents - are abysmal. He has three: his laidback "Nodding Hill" drawl, traces of his native Aussie and, mostly, the bizarre clipped upper-class tones of a Second World War pilot.

Dek Hogan, Digital Spy:

If the idea was to make a terrible soap to tie in with the comedy then it's just not bad enough to be funny. If the idea was to produce something good they've failed there too. Perhaps the problem is that no one has told the cast what it's actually supposed to be.

Jason Donovan appears to be playing it straight and tragically he seems to be the best thing in it, which speaks volumes. Johnny Briggs has a Cornish accent that he seems to have picked up from watching creaky old black and white pirate movies, while a similarly bad accent comes from the pub landlady – Bridget the midget from early Grange Hill.

Critics' reviews - 13th Jan 2008

Kevin O'Sullivan, Sunday Mirror:

Strikingly bad acting, drearily predictable plot lines, a hopeless lack of realism... Echo Beach is just like a normal soap.
But there's a difference. This one is supposed to be rubbish. Or at least I think it is. Set in a kind of Cornish Hollyoaks-on-Sea, ITV's sizzling saga of sand, sex and surfing is one half of an innovative new double act.

Meanwhile, it's great to see that sprightly Johnny Briggs has lost none of his legendary thespian skills. He plays oldfashioned caravan park boss Fin Morgan (Mike Baldwin in overalls and a baseball cap), whose horrid holiday camp is threatened by developers. But timberland Johnny isn't the only abysmal actor by the sea. As controversial cafe owner Daniel Marrack, Jason Donovan speaks with an agonisingly slow, weirdly posh Aussie-Brit accent and is truly terrible. Presumably, this is a deliberate attempt to create that authentic soap effect.

Hermione Eyre, The Independent:

And so Echo Beach begins, full of soaring aerial shots of Cornwall and trendy music. It would have been tempting to make the show very obviously creaky, à la Acorn Antiques, but they've resisted that and made something more unsettling and subversive. Echo Beach is entirely believable as a soap, but the cynical goggles you've acquired from the first half mean you see through it instantly. It's like watching Hollyoaks using the cranium of Kevin Lygo as opera glasses.

Kathryn Flett, The Observer:

the heroically naff Echo Beach (played with a combination of knowing delight by the soap veterans and appropriately wide-eyed enthusiasm from the newbies)

Polly Vernon, The Observer:

Echo Beach (which stars Martine McCutcheon, Jason Donovan and Hugo Speer) is a teen/adult crossover drama, a British OC if you will, with added soul and post-watershed sensibilities

Critics' reviews - 11th Jan 2008

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian:

Echo Beach is pretty standard soap fare. We're in Cornwall, there's a pub, hordes of young attractive surfer totty, love rivals, skeletons in every cupboard, family feuds, stereotypes, an ethnic quota, and a baited hook at the end of the episode to snare you for the next. A couple of real former soap stars - Jason Donovan and Martine McCutcheon - have even washed up on Echo Beach.

Robert Hanks, The Independent:

As for Echo Beach itself... There was some fun to be had from spotting, in the opening scenes, how the scenarios set up in Moving Wallpaper played out. When Jason Donovan, returning to Cornwall after years in exile, sighed over the wrecked condition of the beach café he'd just bought, we knew that it was because most of the scenery budget had gone on Jonathan Pope's marble-lined en suite shower. When a customer in the pub asked for a brandy and soda, we knew that the actress had got a line to speak because she had given Jonathan a blow job, and we knew that the barmaid serving her was called Narinder because ITV needs to meet its ethnic quotas (as the head of continuing drama instructed Jonathan: "The pressure's off black, but the channel's still struggling on Asian"). But as it continued, the hard truth dawned that watching a wooden and derivative soap isn't necessarily more fun just because its intentions are satirical. It needs to be either a bit more Acorn Antiques or a bit more Dynasty.

Echo Beach 102 review

Those that remember the youth quartet of Ramsay Street:

Scott (blond)
Charlene (curly blonde)
Mike (dark)
Jane (straight blonde)

will be delighted by a similar foursome here:

Susan Penwarden's son (blond)
Helen Lederer's daughter (curly blonde)
Jason Donovan's son (dark)
Susan Penwarden's daughter (straight blonde)

And it doesn't really matter who goes after who, because there's always a Hard Hitting Incest Storyline if the family trees get mixed up.

There's also a spare and quite irritating dark haired bloke (Glenn Robinson? Henry Ramsay?) floating around, and a random Hollyoaks couple who are running the Summer Bay caravan park. And an Asian girl with a mildly irritating voice. But the scriptwriters don't hold back on dealing these drama school graduettes some gripping dialogue, allowing them to fully display their vastly impressive acting range:



Evil is Afoot at the caravan park, which from the wideshot looks little better than a prisoner of war camp comprised of white portacabins:



Bulldozing it would be an act of mercy.

Echo Beach 101 review

What a marvellous treat: a step back in time to the golden era of Neighbours in its proper children-were-children and adults-were-adults suburban melodrama days.

Only this is "Polnarren", a Cornish village that would very much like to be Summer Bay/Palm Beach but sadly lacks any inhabitants with even an E-grade GCSE in surfing. And let's face it, we all know what British summers are really like. No amount of upping the colour saturation on Polnarren beach to fluorescent yellow can disguise the grizzled skies.

Susan Penwarden, better known as Tiffany from Eastenders, appears to be on a fairground ride or something in the opening titles. This does nothing to dispel perceptions that she gave birth to two strapping teenagers aged about 12, sired by Hugo Speers. What also doesn't help is having Susie Amy hanging around, who looks a perfectly-preserved late-thirties despite her claims to a 1980s birthdate.

In the local pub, where Mrs McCluskey is now works behind the bar, things are even more confusing. There's nothing strange about a London schoolmistress choosing to spend her retirement in Cornwall, but she has also picked up a Cornish accent over the years. As has Mike Baldwin, who surely only departed the North West (and this earth) a few months ago? Adding to the accent mayhem is Jason Donovan's bizarre British twang - is he hoping to get his children into Eton? - which inspires distinctly Australian vowels from chirpy cockney "Old Cornwall" Susan Penwarden in the followingly exquisitely awful exchange:

Jason:		I went all around the world in my head, and in the end it was the kids who made me realise I belong hyah.
Susan:		Once maybe, but not naow.

Critics' reviews - 10th Jan 2008

Anna Pickard, The Guardian:

Jason and Martine are currently playing the most excrutiating scene I've ever seen either of them in, and that's saying something. However, I don't think it's on purpose. I really don't.