Critics' reviews - 15th Feb 2008

Jane Simon, The Mirror:

There's no need to use Jason or Martine's character names because in this show you see household names playing somebody. Unless the actor once played a character that's more famous than they are.

So if I tell you that tonight Mike Baldwin and Mrs McClusky go on a date, you'll know who I mean. And then shudder at the image that pops into your head.

Critics' reviews - 8th Feb 2008

Mark Wright, The Stage:

Unfortunately, Echo Beach is anything but fun. Dull, plodding and badly acted. Oh well, it was worth a try.

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.

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.

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.