2.5m watch grass grow on BBC Two’s Big Allotment Challenge
Two of the nation’s favourite soaps kicked off Tuesday evening’s prime time viewing, with all the over-the-top frothy drama taking yesterday’s two top spots.
Emmerdale got things underway at 7pm on ITV, with the latest tale of peaceful small-town life taking the day’s second place. A 31% average audience share tuned in to see Charity Dingle/Tate/Sharma bag all the attention due to a devastating pregnancy storyline.
Yes, the village’s very own super villain has come back into the spotlight through a controversial storyline in which the former lady of the evening fell pregnant…to her current partner, Declan. OMG!
The shocking sucker-punch reveal on Monday night brought in 6.2 million viewers but last night’s action, in which Charity basically acted a bit mental while trying to avoid everybody, was watched by just 5.6 million viewers.
Doing slightly better was EastEnders (7:30pm) straight afterwards on BBC One, as all the storylines slowly converged to deliver some heavy foreshadowing before next week’s big event, which kicks off a year of 30th anniversary celebrations.
Regular viewers should know that characters in Albert Square are never more than a minute away from having some kind of ferocious snot-filled breakdown, so it’s been kind of disturbing to see the Beales play happy(ish) families recently, signalling to fans in giant neon signposts that something pretty awful is going to happen soon.
Without Coronation Street around to ruin EastEnders‘ day, the London-based soap bagged the day’s top spot, although that wasn’t really saying much yesterday. Blame it on the beautiful Spring evening – or the lack of genuinely exciting content – but Tuesday’s top players weren’t really performing that well.
An audience of 6.6 million viewers tuned in to see Max Branning’s latest liaison of wrong with Lucy Beale, netting a 34% share and the day’s biggest audience.
Straight afterwards at 8pm, the latest rotation of emotions and bodily discharge in Holby City (BBC One) was watched by 4.4 million viewers. At the same time on Channel 4, Dr Christian and his own dubious colleagues (never trust a medical professional that legally changed their name to Pixie) were back for a new series of the grotesque in Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic (8pm).
As if the standard Embarrassing Bodies wasn’t all kinds of wrong in the first place, Live from the Clinic allows normal members of the public to display their dangly bits to the nation in a pre-watershed time slot LIVE from the comfort of their home.
1.3 million viewers tuned in for the start of the fourth series of the ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘educational’ hour of telly.
At the same time was The Big Allotment Challenge (8pm) over on BBC Two, a station that would never let a successful format die. Even though “The Great British…” isn’t in the title, the concept should be pretty familiar to the masses.
A surprisingly large audience of 2.5 million viewers tuned in to see Fern Britton compère the weed-growing excitement while just trying to be really, really, really nice to everybody, resulting in a 12% share.
Over on ITV, two whole hours were dedicated to a less-than-fresh episode of Midsomer Murders, all the way back from January 2013. This week’s bout of silly murdering fun was brought to you by the theme of chess, including a murderer dressed up as a chess piece.
2.2 million viewers tuned in to see which member of the chess club would be next, translating to a 10% share.
Later in the 9pm slot, BBC One and Channel 4’s big drama options saw a further erosion of viewers, with one particularly struggling.
The salty water taste and rain-soaked vistas of Shetland (BBC One, 9pm) might not have been everyone’s cup of tea but the second series of the regional detective show opened with 5.2 million viewers six weeks ago.
Since then, the audience has slowly declined, although that is fairly normal behaviour for a six-part series. Last night a low of 4.1 million viewers tuned into see DI Perez wrap up the final case on his home island, netting a 19% share and the time slot’s biggest audience.
Despite the warmer climate, a stronger and healthier looking cast and general visual freshness of Channel 4’s New Worlds, the epic period drama continued to attract an embarrassingly small audience.
Opening with 668,000 viewers, the second episode last week saw the audience fall to 411,000. So the good news from last night is that the sequel to The Devil’s Whore actually saw a jump in popularity, with the number of real-life people tuning in going all the way up to 488,000.
Once again, the presence of hunky rugged chaps (including walking lady cat-nip, Jamie Dornan) and pristine upper class totties, the tale of Massachusetts settlers failed to capture the viewers’ attentions, resulting in a 2% share.
The Social TV Analytics report is a daily leaderboard displaying the latest social TV analytics Twitter data from SecondSync. The table shows the top UK TV shows as they are mentioned on Twitter, which MediaTel has correlated with the BARB overnight programme ratings for those shows (only viewable to BARB subscribers).
Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks and key multi-channel stations. Overnight data supplied by TRP are based on 15 minute slot averages. This may differ from tape checked figures, which are based on a programme’s actual start and end time