If you haven’t seen them yet, there’s still a few days left for you to catch up on the first episodes of Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach on the ABC’s iView site.

The blurb from the ABC Shop for the DVD set goes something like this:

Television well and truly collapses in on itself in the much anticipated inter-related soap/comedy-drama Echo Beach and Moving Wallpaper. This release features the complete first series of both shows.

Echo Beach is set in the coastal town of Polnarren in Cornwall, and follows the lives of Daniel (Jason Donovan), Susan (Martine McCutcheon) and Mark (Hugo Speer), and their families and friends. Mark and Susan are married with children but their loyalties are put to the test when her ex-lover, and Mark’s ex-friend, Daniel, turns up in town after 20 years to set up a surf-shop-cafe. Secrets, rivalries, passion and surfing, all set against a beautifully romantic Cornish backdrop.

Moving Wallpaper is a fictional depiction of the soap’s production office; going behind-the-scenes to expose the antics, arguments and backbiting of the show’s staff, helmed by the irrepressible producer and ‘mastermind’ Jonathan Pope (played with relish by Ben Miller). Filmed in a mockumentary-style, this comedy-drama cleverly pokes fun at the TV industry and its players. The cast of the soap regularly appear as versions of themselves; throwing diva strops and pestering writers for more lines, providing plenty of in-jokes and cross-over stories when viewed alongside Echo Beach.

Apart, neither are anything special, but watched in sequence the jokes set up in Moving Wallpaper are realised in the comedy hidden under Echo Beach‘s soap skin.

Get over to iView now and get the first four shows before they expire: Moving Wallpaper episode 1, Echo Beach episode 1, Moving Wallpaper episode 2, Echo Beach episode 2.

Moving Wallpaper airs on ABC1 Wednesdays at 9.30pm and Echo Beach airs on ABC1 on Saturdays at 6pm.