6.1m tune in for Cilla’s ITV bio drama
Last night ITV brought a brand new prime time biopic to our screens, as renowned TV and stage actress Sheridan Smith slipped on a pair of go-go boots to bring viewers the true story of one Priscilla White.
The first of three parts, Cilla (9pm), brashly documented the rise of the eager young Liverpudlian from her boring office job to the dizzying heights of the Blackpool stage, via a rather dubious friendship with The Beatles.
Last night’s opening episode saw the newly named Cilla Black meet her future husband, get a job in the cloak room of the Cavern Club and basically sing her little heart out at any available opportunity.
The sentimental look back to the swinging 60s and the emergence of cheeky chapette, Cilla seemed to have hit the right note, netting an impressive 6.1 million viewers. The show’s surprising popularity saw Cilla easily walk away with the 9pm slot, while netting a 27% share.
The drama was just as perfunctionary over on BBC One as the 11th series of New Tricks trundled on at 9pm.
Last night’s slice of retroactive justice saw Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Danny take centre stage as the crew of medium-to-old dogs (Tamzin Outhwaite brings the average age down significantly) were investigating the occult in the abandoned tunnels under London.
Opening with 5.8 million viewers five weeks ago, the latest run of episodes (and the first without former lead Amanda Redman) has failed to attract the numbers it once did, with just 4.2 million viewers and a 19% share tuning in for last night’s mystery.
Because absolutely no one is sick of the topic yet, Channel 4 once again decided to re-stir the decaying debate regarding the severe shortage of social housing in Britain’s Benefit Tenants at 9pm.
Apparently so good they just had to repeat it, the one off documentary originally aired three months ago and looked at the work of specialist letting agencies who had their fair share of needy and difficult tenants.
A total of 1.2 million viewers – down slightly from the original audience of 1.3 million in June – tuned in to see the worrying predicaments of tenants and landlords alike, resulting in a 5% share and Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day.
Meanwhile Channel 5 was exploring the extremely significant issue of Age Gap Love (9pm) in which chronologically challenged couples declared their fondness for each other. An audience of 751,000 viewers watched as the subjects ignored the haters, resulting in a 3% share.
A bit later on E4 was the much-publicised debut of Glue (10pm), a new drama that basically resembles a three way pile-up of Skins, Broadchurch and Emmerdale. The murder-fuelled drama about rural teens wot party loads while on horse tranquillisers was watched by just 483,000 viewers and a 3% share.
As usual Monday’s biggest players were the soaps, with each corner of the holy soap trinity represented last night.
Emmerdale at 7pm on ITV saw Megan’s plan to take out her brother’s gold-digging fiancée backfire as she was led away by police, resulting in 5.7 million viewers and a 32% share.
Things took a particularly dark turn on EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) as Alfie Moon torched his house in order to claim on insurance. The impending tragedy was enough to secure a 6.3 million viewers and a 29% share.
Two episodes of Coronation Street at (7:30pm and 8:30pm) won Monday’s top spot, with an unusually high summer audience of 7.1 and 7.2 million and tuning in to see the awful storyline involving Lloyd, another bloke and a woman who really isn’t worth it finally make some headway, resulting in a 36% 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.
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