echo echo echo beach

Vera Duckworth died in Coronation Street. They weren’t revealing how it would happen. Would she be mistaken for a terrorist and gunned down in the street? Or would she choke on a stick of Blackpool rock? In the event, mercifully, they opted for ‘quietly, at home’. Jack’s initial reaction (hugging himself and whimpering in an eldritch way) was oddly abstract, like something (so I like to imagine) from a Noh play. But by the end of the second episode, I felt as you should feel: like an acquaintance of long standing had passed away.

That’s the thing about soaps. Viewers may become so involved in them that they mistake the characters for real people, but on the other hand there’s an equal and opposite reaction - a tendency to watch them ironically. Like these are people you know, but don’t have to care about.

Interesting to bear this in mind when watching Echo Beach, ITV’s new soap, which is prefaced by a comedy about the making of the thing. The comedy, benefiting from Ben Miller’s central performance as the soap’s producer, works, but the soap? Shot through a slight haze and acted with varying degrees of awfulness, Echo Beach is a curious experience. It’s like watching a dream someone from the first show is having. Not a particularly interesting dream; rather, the kind you have just before waking, when you’re beginning to see through it all. Chunks of the first show’s ‘reality’ are unearthed throughout, lending it a spurious conviction.

One unforeseen result of this is that, judging by the trailers they were showing (Primeval, Thank God You’re Here, Al Murray’s Happy Hour), Ben Miller now has to feature in every show made by ITV. Having penetrated to this crucial second level of reality, and made himself indispensable there, he is now a fundamental part of the channel’s structure. Or was it only that Ben Miller had a January sale, and ITV got there early?