4.9m caught up in Prey’s intense chase on ITV
The bank holiday weekend’s television was dominated by just one programme, with the perpetually popular variety show Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 7:15pm) securing the extended weekend’s largest audience on Saturday.
The fourth episode of the eighth series brought the usual array of incapable dance troupes, singers and artistic expressionists, with a few half-decent Redcoat-standard entertainers thrown in to keep the audience interested.
8.8 million viewers tuned in to see Alesha Dixon being haunted by some empty advice she gave to a struggling singer many years ago, resulting in a 42% share and the biggest audience of the whole weekend.
Straight afterwards in the digital netherworld of ITV2, enthused host Stephen Mulhern went to great lengths to convince viewers what they had just witnessed on the main channel was the most exciting thing ever. 1.2 million viewers tuned in at 8:30pm to stretch out the Saturday night experience even thinner, with Britain’s Got More Talent netting a 6% share.
Long-running hospital drama Casualty (8:30pm) was BBC One’s last line of defence, proving to be the only real rival to ITV’s light entertainment extravaganza. 4.7 million people watched the latest developments in the UK’s dodgiest fictitious hospital, netting a 24% share.
Despite much of the population basking in the glory of the upcoming bank holiday, Sunday’s schedule was a stark reminder of the futility of fun, with BBC One’s usual Sabbath hits providing that sense of structured sobriety.
The hardened rural adventures of BBC One’s Countryfile once again claimed the day’s biggest audience, with 5.3 million people tuning in to see Ellie Harrison feeling the burden of carrying the schedule mainstay while on solo presenting duties.
A 28% audience share watched as Ellie was given a guided tour of an estate for sale (which had its own mountain, naturally) in the Lake District.
Afterwards, Antiques Roadshow (BBC One, 8pm) took the day’s third place, with 4.6 million viewers tuning in to see Fiona Bruce and her dusty mates wreak evaluation havoc in Southsea, netting a 21% share.
Over on ITV, kooky female detective Vera (8pm) was back for her latest two hour investigation as yet another body was found on another slightly grim Northern beach. 5.1 million viewers followed the second episode of the fourth series, netting Sunday’s 9pm slot and a 23% share.
While this meant that the penultimate episode of The Crimson Field (BBC One) didn’t win its timeslot, the First World War tale of suturing on the battlefield brought in 4.4 million viewers and a 19% share.
By the time yesterday rolled around the schedule was completely back to normal, with BBC One even providing yet another hour of prime time telly to celebrate the genius of Gary Barlow (for some unbeknownst reason that has yet to be made public).
When Corden Met Barlow (BBC One, 9pm) finally brought together two of the UK’s national treasures in a team-up straight out of reasonable people’s nightmares.
3.4 million viewers watched as rotund comedian James Corden bantered about with former rotund singer Gary Barlow as they took a romantic road trip together to explore the Take That singer’s past. So lots of shots of the M6, then.
The double whammy of celebrity fun generated 37,899 tweets, making it the second most tweeted about show of the day.
Doing much better over on ITV was the second part of Prey (9pm) which is best described as a procedural Bourne-type thriller set in Manchester and starring John Simm. 4.9 million viewers caught up with the second slice of the great chase as Simm continued to elude the police, netting the 9pm slot with a 20% share.
At the same time on Channel 4 was the début of Bear Grylls’ genius new idea – instead of entertaining the masses with his own tears of pain, the adventurer decided to put members of the public through the grind instead.
The Island with Bear Grylls put modern masculinity to the test as a bunch of TV-ready middle aged, middle class advertising executives were stranded on an island for a month and asked to cry into their handheld cameras.
1.9 million viewers tuned in to see if anyone of the 13 men were eaten alive in the first episode (sadly, no), with the first of five episode resulting in an 8% share.
Earlier, the first episode of Coronation Street (ITV) at 7:30pm proved to be Monday’s biggest hit, bagging 7.1 million viewers. Despite the unabated outpouring of misery in EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) the Walford soap only managed to take Monday’s second place with an audience of 6.8 million viewers.
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.