5m tune in for latest misogynistic murder on Silent Witness
Thursday night brought the remains of yet another freshly slaughtered young lady for baying prime time audiences as the Silent Witness (BBC One, 9pm) gang snapped on their latex gloves, perfected the super serious expression that comes with the job and headed off for one last case.
So far the charming 17th series of the crime drama has mixed up the formula, offering fans unique takes on the same sticky subject to keep things fresh. The current series started out with a relatively quaint death for the guest-starring female corpse (shot in the head while her toddler was poisoned) but things sure did escalate, as cuddly murders don’t bring in the big ratings.
Despite a relatively tame start, viewers have since seen a young woman’s brutally mutilated body found in a suitcase in a pond (foetus ripped out, natch) and the remains of a lap dancer discovered in a Scottish park.
Last night’s penultimate episode had the worrisome task of setting up the series’ final case and the creative writers didn’t disappoint: they only went and put this week’s mysterious corpse (yeah, another schoolgirl) in an actual grave in a cemetery. Although, the meta twist might be accidentally the most respectful murder site in the history of the show.
Silent Witness may have a super strong female lead with a plucky can-do attitude and sassy hair but the misogynistic undertones are becoming hard to ignore.
5 million viewers once again lapped up the greyed-out colours and forced sense of gloom (the above picture had to be seriously brightened), keeping consistent with the show’s recent performance. The nation’s appetite for questionable kicks is clearly going unnourished, with the second to last episode scoring a 21% share and the biggest audience in the 9pm slot.
Over on ITV, it was time for something completely different as the broadcaster basked viewers in cheap sunshine, with Benidorm (9pm) helping them escape the chilly atmosphere over on BBC One. 4.6 million viewers watched as hostess Joyce threw caution to the wind and had a day off.
ITV’s hour of light-hearted entertainment didn’t quite have the draw of rotting corpses but a 20% share watched as Joyce bumped into an old flame played by Matthew Kelly, resulting in a fairly memorable day out.
At the same time on BBC Two, enthused Presentron Dan Snow was back on our screen to celebrate the history of the winter Olympics in…eh, Dan Snow’s History of the Winter Olympics (9pm). 1.2 million viewers tuned in to see Torvil and Dean’s Boléro routine in slow motion just one more time, resulting in a 5% share.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 wrapped up the last episode of The Undateables‘ third series with yet another catch-up episode.
1.9 million viewers tuned in to see how the stars of the show got on in the topsy turvy world of love, only to be beaten by the tasteful cautionary tale Bodyshockers: My Tattoo Hell at 10pm, which secured the channel’s biggest audience of the day with 2 million viewers.
Earlier in the evening, Birds of a Feather (ITV, 8:30pm) whole-heartedly embraced its creaking format as age mauled the titular sisters like an aggressive predator.
While it may not be hitting the heights of the opening episode, a secure 5.9 million viewers tuned in to see Tracey get botox (oh, the humanity!), Sharon realise she needed a hearing aid and Doreen found out she had actually passed away a number of years ago.
On Channel 4 at the same time was the latest thrilling instalment of The Jump (8pm). An audience of 1.6 million watched as nervous unfamiliar celebrities were replaced with more confident unfamiliar celebrities as everyone began to back out of the least scary reality show ever.
A double helping of Emmerdale (ITV) proved to be ITV’s biggest hit of the day, with the 8pm episode securing 6.7 million viewers and the second dollop of quaint country drug dealing falling to 6.5 million viewers.
But it was BBC One which had the most to be happy about on Thursday – so soon after a schedule clash saw EastEnders (7:30pm) destroyed by Emmerdale, the Walford soap was back on top last night as 7 million viewers tuned in for the latest round of shouty acting.
The day’s biggest audience and a 32% share watched as Poppy finally read viewers’ feedback and f***ed off from the Square for good.
Later at 10:30pm Kirsty Wark and Newsnight (BBC Two) managed to get their hands on the Guardian‘s exclusive interview with a disturbingly convincing Amanda Knox as she quite reasonably explained why she’d prefer to become a fugitive.
438,000 viewers watched as the woman who was vilified by the British press attempted to hang on to as normal a life as possible, all-in-all coming across alarmingly well.
But all the attention was on Question Time (BBC One) at 10:30pm, as the latest round if topical debate attracted 2.5 million viewers and was the most tweeted about show of the day, with the Norwich set-show generating 25,671 tweets during broadcast.
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.