If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach

ITV, Fridays 9pm

This is an astonishing idea. It really is. Take soap opera – one of life’s more shallow and vapid genres of entertainment – and expose it for what it is on prime time television. Tell the audience in the strongest possible terms that casting decisions are made for the wrong reasons, that ethnicity is treated as just a box on a form and anything of substance will be jettisoned the moment something sexier comes along. There is nothing new about spoof "behind the scenes" programmes and generally speaking they are considered pretty accurate. Larry Sanders exposed chat shows, Annually Retentive exposed panel games and now Moving Wallpaper exposes soaps. The difference is that Moving Wallpaper’s soap is real. Or realish at any rate. It isn’t inter-cut with behind the scenes development – it is a properly made programme and it follows Moving Wallpaper each week.

As I write this I’ve only watched Moving Wallpaper – I wanted to get this down before seeing Echo Beach – and with one exception it was a glorious exercise in apparently biting the hand that feeds you. The exception was a remark which attacked celebrity reality/talent shows and the one they used was Celebrity Fame Academy because it’s made by the BBC. I don’t feel like a cynical bunny if I suggest that ITV made its cash-cow talent shows off limits for even this exercise. Aside from that it was full speed ahead.

A worthy sounding drama is weeks away from broadcast when the producer is sacked. In his place comes Ben Miller as an ambitious and shallow young man hell-bent on producing nothing but ratings. Once he’s got his office redecorated (out of the show’s set budget) he sets about changing everything that the ex-producer and the writing staff had agreed. He casts Martine McCutcheon and Jason Donovan based on a focus group (of one person who happened to fit the demographic), he sexes up the name, he bans anyone ugly from the cast and gives a role to an aspiring actress in exchange for a blow job.

We see just how focused he is when a child actress refuses to cry for an important scene. He goes over to her and announces he’s got some news about her parents. Cut to him leaving the set, a child crying in the background and he puts his sunglasses on like a man who feels he’s done a good job.

None of the cast of Moving Wallpaper come off as likable – Miller’s character is shallow, Raquel Cassidy as head of series is spiteful, the writers are bitter because they are forever compromising their "art" and the script editor who goes between the factions seems to be playing them off against each other for her own ends.

The episode ended with the characters sitting down and doing what we are all about to do – watch the first episode of Echo Beach. You’ll be excusing me.

Right, I’m back, and that was interesting. I should say that Echo Beach is the sort of show I have never had any interest in watching and would sooner stare at a blank screen than sit through. I am aware that it represents a certain kind of television as it is made these days. Whether it is an accurate copy of Hollyoaks and its ilk or one exaggerated for comic effect I really couldn’t say. I suspect it is for real – ghastly as it was – because nothing seemed too over the top.

The Moving Wallpaper influences were there for all to see. Anyone tuning in just for Echo Beach because they missed the point and skipped just another new comedy series they didn’t think they’d like wouldn’t have noticed anything. But from Martine McCutcheon wearing a dress which the fictional producer thought she wouldn’t like (and which would strangle any diva impulses straight away) to the token Asian behind the bar to the kids smoking dope on the beach it was all pre-shadowed in Moving Wallpaper.

Echo Beach had lots of dramatic, swooping shots of beautiful Cornish coastline. But so did Doc Martin and I liked that so I’m not complaining. It also devoted the second half of the episode to an impromptu teenage beach party where people danced in short skirts (another thing mentioned in MW – she was indeed wearing the shortest skirt known to humanity) and an inevitable fight broke out over who was dancing with who. There was some good technique involved – one of them certainly knew how to execute an efficient takedown – but it was still every bit as shallow as it was meant to be. The dramatic ending was cliché after cliché and perfectly conveyed writers who were forced at the last minute to do something they didn’t want to do.

Echo Beach is not a spoof – there are no deliberately exaggerated performances, no Acorn Antiques gaffes and no dialogue which is unrealistic. I don’t even think it is formulaic soap opera cranked up to 110%. Unless someone shows me I’m wrong, I think Echo Beach is absolutely what a modern glossy soap is. And that is why it is brilliant.

I mentioned above about the bravery in making this double bill. I almost want to heap it on more because the soap product was not at all what you’d expect from a soap opera made as part of what is essentially a comedy programme. But then my cynical side takes over. If this was on Channel 4 or BBC2 I would say that the channel was brave but on ITV I really don’t believe that the majority of the audience would get the joke. Moving Wallpaper tells you about the tricks that soaps use. It explains just how shallow things are. The Echo Beach shows it to you and the reaction ought to be "Oh yeah – they do that a lot and now I get why." It should make people turn away from the glossy, vacant series which pass for drama on certain channels. Alas, I think ITV have outsmarted all of us – they have produced something which appeals to people like me who shun ITV whenever humanly possible, while at the same time not alienating the very people the whole thing is essentially taking the piss out of. Those viewers who would genuinely get excited about a show like Echo Beach because of the stars, the short skirts, the pathetic attempts at drama won’t understand what is really going on. They’ll just watch Echo Beach and probably not come into contact with anyone smart enough to get it.

It will be interesting to see how the two shows develop – Moving Wallpaper crammed an awful lot of exposing into its first twenty two minutes (and, sidebar, when did half an hour of British television go from 25 to 22 minutes?) and I wonder if they have enough to keep the momentum going for another eleven weeks. I’ll be giving it another go so they can at least count me in and tick a few boxes on the demographic report.