TV Overnights: Lloyd’s parental surprise nets 6.5m for ITV1
Lloyd Mullaney’s latest drama on the cobbles helped Coronation Street (ITV1, 7:30pm) attract Thursday’s biggest audience. Innocent coincidences never happen in Weatherfield and Lloyd has been chewing over this fact since bumping in to an old flame last week. Sure enough, after five minutes of investigating he discovers ex-special friend Mandy has a grown up daughter that has never been mentioned.
6.5 million people tuned in to see Lloyd do a bit of basic maths and realise he could very well be the proud daddy to a grown up woman. The episode was watched by an average audience share of 31% but was down 1 million viewers week on week. Earlier on the same channel, rural soap Emmerdale (7pm) performed well, netting 5.5 million viewers (a 28% share) for ITV1.
For some inexplicable reason BBC One’s dumbed down consumer affairs programme, Watchdog (8pm), continued to pull in a surprising amount of viewers. Anne Robinson’s down to earth, ASDA-frequenting, woman of the people image really plays well with the alarmist programme’s audience. Last night saw Anne and her bumbling sidekicks, Matt and Chris, take on the wrath of the giant oil companies, with no concern for their own safety.
Anne reckons we’re paying more for our oil and gas than we were a few years ago (although I suspect a researcher filled her in on this revelation). 4.8 million souls were sucked in to the dizzying mix of facts and outrage, resulting in a 21% share.
BBC One brought us our weekly slice of emotional exhumations with Who Do You Think You Are? at 9pm. Last night saw Doctor Who and ER star Alex Kingston step into the time tunnel of nasty surprises.
Getting past the fact that her parents weren’t actually a pair of time travelling assistants, the emotional turmoil kicked off as the actress searched for details of her great grandfather (who died photographing the First World War). This then led her to the discovery that a distant relative ran a brothel back in ye olden days, to make ends meet. 4.3 million (a 18.9% share) viewers watched Alex keep her cool, up 4% week on week.
The latest episode of Mrs Biggs (ITV1, 9pm) managed to pull in a slightly bigger audience than the first two episodes. Last night we saw Charmian deal with her husband’s infamous escape from prison, all the time under the watchful eye of the fuzz while planning a secret reunion in Australia, the land of the lawless. Oh and Charmian had to get used to her husband’s new mug after some budget plastic surgery went a bit…wrong. 4 million viewers caught up with the biopic, netting an 18% share.
After many years of torment and waiting, Channel 5 finally decided to bring us The Truth About Hillsborough (8pm). Based upon last week’s finding from enquiry, the one hour documentary attracted 629,000 thousand viewers. Never a channel to stay gloomy for long, up straight afterwards was the weekly visit to Southfork. The glamour of Dallas pulled in 1.5 million viewers, down 300,000 viewers since last week’s episode.
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.