Archive for 15 January, 2008
technical hitch
For some reason, your (much appreciated) comments seem to be turning up attached to the wrong posts at the moment.
Jen’s response to that’s another hour of my life I can’t get back is here
Eamon’s responses to New Year, same old issues? are here
Sorry!
that’s another hour of my life I can’t get back
No-one in the Plannersphere seems to have been blogging about ITV’s Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach experiment. Which surprises me as I thought they wouldn’t have missed the chance to lay into to something quite as disastrous as this.
I can see why it would have seemed like a good idea – a new sexy post-watershed soap, with the added bonus of a fictional behind-the-scenes show that plants plot points and gives a richer viewer experience. The opportunities for press-the-red-button or online action were almost limitless, with the potential to bring all the web 2.0 More4 type viewers back to the ITV1 fold with some genuinely innovative programming.
A shame then that it turned into such a tram smash. The soap Echo Beach is sub-Hollyoaks in terms of script, production values, acting and general quality. The only comedy comes from the fact that they have blatantly tried to film it in the middle of the British Winter and the cast all sport red noses and goosebumps in every t-shirt clad beach scene. The wintery gale force winds have also ensured that there’s some truly dodgy dubbing of dialog for most outdoor scenes too.
Moving Wallpaper (the fictional behind the scenes show) is possibly worse. I dutifully tuned in for the first episode and it produced two minutes of sharp, witty comedy (in a Studio 60 style ‘how can we win the British Soap Awards’ scene) and another 28 minutes of cringe worthy rubbish and ads.
ITV’s only hope? That it turns into a so-bad-its-good cult hit. But then that’s never going to deliver the kind of viewing figures that will keep their advertisers happy. Or am I just missing the point? Is it deliberately bad?
