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.
1 comment:
I love it, in the true glorious naffness of Eldorado, mixed with the lame storylines of Crossroads. Rubbish "yoof" actors mixed with washed-up veterans, creaky scripts and creakier performances.
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